(ISSN 0043-6534) WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

The State Historical Society ofWlsconsin • Vol. 82, No. 4 • Summer, 1999

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/% THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN GEORGE L. VOGT, Director

Officers GERALD D. VLSTE, /Resident RICHARD H. HOLSCHER, Treasurer PATRICIA A. Bot;E, First Vice-President GEORGE L. VOCE, .Secretary MARY A. SATHER, Second Vice-President

THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OK WISCONSIN is both a state agency and a private membership organization. Fotinded in 1846—two years before statehood—and char­ tered in 18.53, it is the oldest American historical society to receive continuous ptiblic funding. By statute, it is charged with collecting, advancing, and disseminating knowl­ edge of Wi.sconsin and of the trans-Allegheny West. The Society serves as the archive of the State of Wisconsin; it collects all manner of books, periodicals, maps, mantLscripts, relics, newspapers, and aural and graphic materials as they relate to North America; it maintains a museum, library, and research facility in Madi.son as well as a statewide sys­ tem of historic sites, school services, area research centers, and affiliated local societies; it administers a broad program of historic preservation; and publishes a wide variety of his- tt)rical materials, both scholarly and popular.

MEMBERSHIP in the Society is open to the public. Individual memhership (one perstm) is $30. Senior Citizen Individual memhership is $25. Family membership is $35. .Senior Citi­ zen Family membership is $30. .Supporting membership is $100. .Sustaining membership is $250. A Patron contributes $500 or more. Life membership (one person) is $1,000.

MEMBERSHIP in the Friends of the SHSW is open to the public. /nrfii/irfuaZ membership (one person) is $20. Family membership is $30.

THE SOCIETY is governed by a Board of C^urators which includes twenty-four elected members, the Governor or designee, three appointees of the Governor, a legislator from the majority and minority from each hou.se, and ex offirio, the President of the University of Wisconsin System, the President of the Friends of the State Historical Society, the President of the Wisconsin History Foundation, Inc., and the President of the Adminis­ trative Committee of the Wisconsin C^ouncil for Local History. A complete listing of the Curators appears inside the back cover

The Society is headquartered at 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1482, at the juncture of Langdon and Park streets on the University of Wisconsin campus. The State Historical Museum is located at 30 North Carroll Street. A pardal lisung of phone numbers (Area Code 608) follows:

General Administration 264-6400 In.stitutional advancement 264-6.58.5 Affiliated local societies 264-6583 Library circulation desk 264-6534 Archives reading room 264-6460 Library reference services 264-65.3.5 Contribution of manuscript materials 264-6477 Maps 264-64.58 Development 264-6580 Membership 264-6.587 Editorial offices 264-6461 Microforms reading room 264-6536 Fax 264-6404 Mu.seum tours 264-65.55 Film collections 264-6470 Newspaper reference 264-6531 Genealogical reference inquiries 264-6535 Picture collections 264-6470 Historic preservation 264-6,5(X) Public information office 264-6.586 Historic sites 264-6586 School services 264-6.579 Hours of operation 264-6.588 General web address www.shsw.wisc.edu

ON THE COVER: "Manitowocfrom the North .Side, " a watercolor by G. Kirshtez in 1856. An article about Manitowoc during the Civil War era begins on page 287. Courtesy ofthe Rahr-West Museum. Volume 82, Number 4 / Summer, 1999

WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Published quarterly by the State Historical Society ofWlsconsin, The Hamerstroms: 816 State Street, Madison, Conservation Pioneers in Hard Times 255 Wisconsin 5.3706-1482. Distributed to members as part of Helen M. Cornell their dues. Individual member­ ship, $30; senior citizen individual, $25; family, $35; Making a Fire Within: senior citizen family, $30; The Writing of a Civil War supporting, $100; sustaining, Narrative from Wisconsin 287 $250; patron, $500 or more; life (one person), $1,000. Single Kerry A. Trask numbers from Volume 57 forward are $5 plus postage. Microfilmed copies available through REVIEW ESSAY University Microfilms, 300 North Wisconsin, The Sesquicentennial, and Videotape 308 Zeeb Road, Ann Aibor, Michigan 48106. (^ommunicaUons should Roberif. Gough be addressed to the editor. The Society does not assume responsi­ bility for statements made by Boole Reviews 314 contributors. Periodicals postage Boole Review Index 319 paid at Madison, Wi.sconsin. Postmaster: Send address changes From the State Archives 320 to Wisconsin Magazine of History, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1482. Wisconsin History Checklist 328 Copyright © 1999 by the State Hisloricai Society of W'isconsin. Contributors 330

The Wisconsin Magazine of History Editor is indexed annually by the editors; PAUL H. HASS cumulative indexes are assembled decennially. In addition, articles are abstracted and indexed in Associate Editors America: History and Life, Historical MARGARET T. DWYER Abstracts, Index to Literature on the JOHN O. HOLZHUETER American Indian, and the Combined Retrospective Index to Journals in History, 1838-1974. Book Review Editor CHRISTOPHER W. WELLS Photographs identified with WHi negative numbers are from the Historical Societv's collections. Frances (Fran) Hamerstrom in a central Wisconsin landscape. Aldo Leopold, who inspired Fran and her husband Frederick in their life work and who supervised their graduate studies at the University ofWlsconsin, may have taken this snapshot.

254 The Hamerstroms: Conservation Pioneers in Hard Times

By Helen M. Corneli

INTRODUCTION

MET Fran—pronounced Frahn—and Hammy in 1960, shortly after my Ihusband and I moved to eighty run-down acres of Wisconsin farmland a few miles south of their home in Plainfield, Waushara County. We became fast friends. Fran's memory was the seedbed for this account. After Hammy's death in 1989, she opened his files and her writings and memo­ rabilia to me. I wrote down her sometimes salty answers (she was then in her eighties) and checked her facts and chronology by interviewing friends, colleagues, and area residents. As "characters," the Hamerstroms charmed and mystified their acquaintances, and generated stories—some wildly ex­ aggerated—among the locals who knew them only slightly. It was essential that I validate what I heard and was told. A lucky find provided facts about their role in the Resettlement Admin­ istration. Seeking a magazine article in a dusty file drawer in a storeroom, I came upon two large envelopes, postmarked July 19, 1979, containing the only material Hammy had saved from those Resettlement days: four inches of onionskin carbons, undated, in random order. (The dates on the en­ velopes meant little, since the parsimonious Hamerstroms habitually reused envelopes. Probably Hammy had simply put the old "dead" files into con­ veniently empty envelopes when he made room for new files.) Following Fran's death in August, 1998, their daughter moved many pa­ pers to her home in Oregon, though others are dispersed between attic and music room in the Plainfield house. So Hamerstrom sources and his­ tory remain informal. Absent an organized archive, the footnotes to this piece are somewhat quirky, and I have freely undergirded the story with my forty years' knowledge and experience of both the area and the Hamer­ stroms during our long friendship. H.M.C.

Copyright © 1999 bv the Statt- Historical Society of Wiseonsiii J.DO All rights of reprodiicliou in any form reserved. WISCONSIN MAGAZINE Or HISTORY SUMMER, ' 999

N a brilliant autumn day in 1935, loiter­ vehicle pull over The driver, a tall, immacu­ Oers on the unpaved streets ofthe shabby lately dressed young man with dark hair and Juneau County village of Necedah suddenly a pleasant smile, opened his door to quesdon came to attention.' A jaunt)' green Essex a bystander "Can you direct me to the Reset- roadster was moving slowly dcjwTi the scjirino- dement Administration office, please?" lent street, its open rumble seat piled high The loiterer scratched his head. "Never with boxes, boxes that were themselves heerd of it. What's it fer?" topped by a botanist's plant press and a clas­ "It is where people are studying the sic Windsor chair both securely tied down. muskrats, beaver, and clucks in this area." Behind it, the car pulled a small trailer, also "Oh, you mean the relief office. Go on welbloaded. Lanky men, their eyes shaded down a block or two and you'll see it—on under battered caps and fedoras, watched the the right. Used t'be a bank." Heads swiveling, they watched the driver ' The village population in 1930 was 761. The go on, park, get out, and open the door for rural farm population was 530, of whom 225 were a stunning young woman in heels and a classified as of "foreign or mixed parentage." In ad­ well-cut tweed suit. Holding her arm, he es­ dition, census takers found eighty-six Native Ameri­ corted her into the office. cans in the entire county, which was probably a low "Quite the lady!" said one emphatically. figure. Fifteenth Census ofthe United States, 1930: Popu­ lation, Volume 3, Part 2, p. 1354; Fifteenth Census ofthe Such was the entrance of the elegant United States, 1930: The Indian Population ofthe United young Frederick and Frances Hamerstrom .States and Alaska, 14-15. into a drought-plagued pocket of the Mid- ^R,^^

• ^^^^^ •islidni Piuilson Fran Hamerslrom's Essex convertible, 1932, in front of her family's Milton, Massachusetts, home, as she and Frederick set out for the Midwest and their neiv lixKS. Her father, Laurence Bertram Flint (standing), made the trailer The Hcimerstroms used this car and trailer during their Resettlement Administration work near Necedah, 1935-1937.

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The palatial Flint home at Milton, Massachusetts, from which Fran made her debut. west. Ironically, these bluebloods were as much children ofthe Great Depression as the mHft^ impoverished people they had come to live among. In the crash of 1929, Fran's wealthy father, Laurence Bertram Flint, then deputy chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New England district, had "suffered losses," as the upper classes delicately put it.~ Still,

^ According to Fran's brother, Putnam Flint, their father had attended a school near Dresden in Germany between the ages of seven and eleven, and started his career as an office boy for the Walter Baker & Company chocolate business in Massachusetts. After he married the daughter of a merchant prince, the owner ofthe H. & L. Chase bags and bagging company of Boston, he no longer needed to work and took his family to Europe \. ..-<*... along with his 1906 Oldsmobile. In Germany he de­ signed a system of criminal investigation for the gov­ ernment which relied on ordinary forensics and the new method, fingerprinting. That was why Fran spent most of her early years in Germany. A great-aunt was Ellen Chase, the noted historian. See Edward F. Flint, Jr., and Gwendolyn S. Flint, FlintFamily History of the Ad­ ^jj^^i^ venturesome Seven (2 vols., Baltimore, 1984), 2: 1029- 1030, 1048-1049; and Erwin James Otis and Florence Leverett Hodge, Genealogy of William Ijwerett (1773-1807) Fran Flint as a girt in Germany where her father was and Descendants (Ann Arbor, 1974), leaves 4 and 5. employed and where she learned German and deportment.

257 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1999

Hammy and Fran married in his senior year, and their combined ingenuity and willingness to work financed a subsequent year at a game school and then his master's degree and her bachelor of science at Iowa State University. They were prime examples ofthe wide dis­ parity of Depression effects in the class- con­ scious, regionally and ethnically varied Amer­ ica ofthe 1930's. In a sense their choices and actions connect them with later rebels: those children of privilege who in the 1960's re­ jected their parents' values. Unlike many of those later counterparts, Fran and Hammy retained a belief in the worth of an aristo­ cratic heritage and breeding, and in the value of the social graces. But they were converts to the new gospel of conservation, and they had both the brains and the will—not to mention the luck—to find the right people to set them e- on their way to remarkable careers. *m. ARM folk, by contrast, had experienced Fthe Depression years as a time of unre­ Eha I lamt-rstrom I'ai lieved deprivatioir, hardship, and fear. The Hamerstroms, early in their life together Their hard times started earlier and, in the sand counties of central Wisconsin, lasted Fran was able to make her debut from their longer. A nationwide agricultural depres­ big, beautiful house in a Boston suburb—a sion had begun in the early 1920's and had house whose servants' rooms now stood deepened distressingly by the time Franklin empty. Educated by her German governess to D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932. develop the bearing and skills required for an By then, with credit dried up and debt international hostess, she was instead pro­ loads already high, farmers were vulnera­ pelled by need into modeling for fashionable ble—not only to the normal ups and downs Boston department stores, where she made of markets and the weather but also to more money than her father did. larger problems: to drought, to crop failure Frederick—Hammy to all who knew him— related to depleted soil, and to takeover by was the eldest son of the first Frederick large commercial enterprises able to buy Hamerstrom of Winchester, Massachusetts, a the big machinery that permitted eco­ man who had, according to his son, "made nomies of scale. Five million farm folk— and lost several fortunes" by acquiring "com­ roughly a million families—were on relief panies in trcxtble and turning them around." in 1933, and many ofthe slightly more suc­ The Hamerstroms lived the good life. cessful still lived in desperate poverty.'^ Hammy's aunt. Ruby Hamerstrom, was The states did what they could with loans Clarence Darrow's second wife, and "Uncle of livestock, improved seed, and fertilizer for Clarence" was a considerable influence on his those able to follow recommendations that bright and independent nephew. But the on­ set of the Depression ensured that Hammy •' United States Department of Agriculture, Farm had to work part-time at Dartmouth and bor­ Security Administration, History of Farm Security Ad­ row money for his last two years at Harvard. ministration (1940).

258 CORNEI.I: THE HAMERSEROMS would rebuild soil and increase yields. It 1925, on Leopold's recommendation, the worked for some. Others received sickly stock, headwaters of the Gila River in New Mexico late seed, or indifferent treatment by govern­ were designated the first primitive area in the ment agents."' Those unfortunates now owed country, if not in the world. money on the unfulfilled promise of aid. Frederick Hamerstrom, who was shaped In some areas, a long cycle of farm de­ by hunting and fishing with his father as a pletion and misuse had come to a point of boy, loved the outdoors. Indeed, a mutual de­ no return. For them, Roosevelt's New Deal votion to hunting was a large part of his and developed a bolder approach. It aimed to do Fran's courtship. Their careers in conserva­ away with intractable rural poverty by mov­ tion, however, came about almost by chance. ing farmers from unsuitable land to more Imminent graduation forced Hammy to find promising situations. The acres thus emp­ a career that would let them work—and tied could be studied by biologists, and, if hunt—outdoors. With no obvious avenue to they proved suitable, would be remade into be seen, he and Fran dreamed of a private flourishing reserves for wildlife. This was the hunting preserve. He later recalled, "Har­ task of the Resettlement Administration.'' vard's placement advisors were equally igno­ Replacing people with animals was a novel rant. We decided to set up a shooting pre­ idea in the 1930's, a time when there was no serve in South Carolina. The wisdom of the "conservation movement" as we understand early '30s dictated that the way tc5 have lots of it. Most people then thought that animals game was to raise it on game farms and turn were to hunt, or to own as pets or livestock. it loose. It behooved us to learn how."' In those days, thoughtless waste and slaugh­ They pictured themselves, surrounded by ter were common; it was considered fine their wealthy friends, living a lively and culti­ sport to shoot migrating hawks or waterfowl vated life off the profits of such a venture. But during the spring nesting season. Yet signs of their notion did not .survive their year-long change were apparent. The U.S. Forest Prod­ apprenticeship at a game school in Clinton, ucts Laboratory opened in 1922 in Madison; New Jersey. Courses such as "Business Meth­ the first federal wildlife refuges on the Upper ods for Game Breeders" and "Pheasant Ra­ Mississippi were established in 1924; and the tions for Laying" matched neither their in­ spring shooting of waterfowl was prohibited terests nor their aptitudes. The reality of in 1927. Realizing that, if their sport were to incubating and rearing pheasant chicks con­ continue, bag limits on fish, birds, and big vinced them: animal husbandry was not for game must be imposed and reserves created, them. And the behavior of certain "sports­ farsighted hunters organized for conserva­ men" on the school's hunting preserve made tion. William T. Hornaday's Our Vanishing them leery of the likely clientele of such an Wild Life (1913) reached and stirred Aldo enterprise: the "short dark-skinned men who Leopold, the father of modern conservation, spoke broken English, and who couldn't and in 1929, Willard G. Van Name wrote Van­ shoot and disregarded the most basic con­ ishing Forest Reserves, an influential book.*' In ventions of hunting." One such group, re­ turning empty-handed from the field, de­ manded that their guide put live pheasants in * James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise bags and hang them on the fence as targets. Famous Men: Three Tenant Families (Cambridge, Mas- In a comment revealing her aristocratic sense .sachusetts, 1960),.35. ' Rudolph A. Christiansen and Sydney D. Stani- of proprieties, Fran observed more than fifty forth, The Wisconsin Resettlement Program ofthe 1930's: years later, "It has always been a mystery to me Land Acquisition, Family Relocation and Rehabilitation, University ofWlsconsin, Department of Agricultural Economics, Ag Ec. 52 (1968), 2. ^ Aldo Leopold Centennial Symposium, Ahio Leopold: '•'' Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work Mentor, ed. Richard E. McCabe (Madison: University of (Madison, 1988), 128. Wisconsin, Department of Wildlife Ecology, 1988), 32.

259 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 that we guided parties of iimnigrants or near- of the new conservation movement. No Eu­ immigrants, rather than hunters from well-es­ ropean practice of private ownership, cap­ tablished (jld American families."*^ Clearly, a tive breeding, or "hunting for money" for hunting preserve would not do. But the time him. Unlike members of such organizations at the game school, with Fran as the first (and as More Game Birds in America, Leopold probably the only) woman ever admitted, was committed to the democratic American showed her what a combinatic^n of hospital­ system of public hunting. Succinctly, un­ ity and bravado could do to win her accep­ equivocally, he called for a period of trial. tance. That combination became a perma­ Sportsmen must cooperate with other con­ nent part ofthe Hamerstrom repertoire. servationists, he said. Research must be the Hammy, always alert and enterprising, base for game management and restoration, decided to attend the 1930 meeting ofthe and for predator control. He urged the con­ Ametican Game Conference in New York. ference to "recognize conservation as one His recollections recreate that experience: integral whole, ofwhich game restoration is only a part. In predator control and other [In attendance were] . . . the almost activities where game management conflicts legendary heads of state and provincial in part with other wild life, sportsmen must game departments, some U.S. Biologi­ join with nature-lovers in seeking and ac­ cal Survey men, and even a thin smat­ cepting the findings of impartial research. "'*' tering of universit)' people—a rich mix­ ture of potential job-givers .... To our It was a defining moment in American naive and intolerant eyes, this collec­ conservation—and for the young Hamer­ tion of national leaders seemed a stroms. Leopold's policy was adopted and rather ordinary lot, discussing . . . how held, essentially imrevised, until 1973, the to raise money, how to influence sorae year after Fran and Hammy retired from the political action or other, how to pro­ Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. mote this or that special interest. In 1930, it fixed Hammy's determination to Then suddenly a slender deeply become a shaper of wildlife policy. He began tanned man stilled the room as he ap­ looking for a job. In September 1932, at a proached the podium with speed and Baltimore convention of game commission­ elegance. And I heard a voice that I can ers, he heard an Iowa game warden tell of an still remember ... an inspiring speaker opening with a new game survey conducted an idealist as well as a practical man, who plainly—unlike his predecessors— by Paul Errington in Ames, Iowa. Hammy knew exactiy what he wanted to say and wrote at once to apply. His letter must have how best to say it. This man, totally un­ stood out from 152 others, for he was hired known to me, towered above the oth­ at a salary of $90 a month. It was less than he ers in his personalitv', in his grasp ofthe had hoped for, but salary was secondary, as subject and in his ability to communi­ he assured his father, for the job was a step­ cate. And I knew that—remote as the ping stone to "almost anything in the field."' ^ possibility was—if it could ever be in my Errington, a new Ph.D. in zoology from the power, I would do my best to learn from this man who had set me afire.^ University ofWlsconsin, was the head of the first cooperative wildlife research project in the country. His response to Hammy's letter HE man was Aldo Leopold of Madison, brought the elated Hamerstroms to Iowa in T Wisconsin, a rising star in the vanguard '" Meine, Aldo Leopold, 277. ^ Frances Hamerstrom, Is She Coming Too?: Mem­ '' Frederick N. Hamerstrom (FNH) to his parents, oirs of a Lady Hunter (Ames, Iowa, 1989), 60. probably September, 1932, Hamerstrom family collec­ •' Aldo Leopold Centennial Symposium, Mentor, tion. Unless otherwise noted, all of FNH's correspon­ 32; New York Times, December 2 and 3, 1930. dence, notes, and the like remain in familv hands.

260 Estella and A Ido Leofjold and 'Hammy " and Fran Hamerstrom, with Hammy living up lo his nickname by imitating his mentor's stance. her roadster packed with clothes and camp­ signments at Ruthven, the university's field ing gear. (After a brief visit with the Darrows in station, began a lifelong pattern of building Chicago, they had camped in farmers' fields a network of colleagues and friends. the whole way.) Classes had already started. Presently the former English major was Hammy began work right away; an early snow writing papers, and, eventually, the best made tracking possible. Fran found ajob at master's exam his mentor had ever read. student wages. To her astonishment, she was He made the scholastic honorary, Phi offered thirty-five cents a day, not an hour as Kappa Phi, and Fran was declared the fe­ she had supposed when the amount was male student most likely to succeed in re­ stated. She gulped, and took it an)'way. search.''^ Errington liked and appreciated They could not have found a better situa­ him, and gave him an inscribed copy of tion. The fieldwork assignments were the Leopold's classic text. Game Management, lessons of their dreams: collecting, dissecting, upon its publication in July, 1933.'^ and classifying owl pellets to decide exactly what owls did eat; finding the nests of the Y then the Hamerstroms were moving hawks they saw flying over a great marsh;'- Bsteadily away from family and the studying pheasant nesting and the ecology of inherited attitudes that did not fit their in­ bobwhite quail; above all learning to take tended course. Designer clothing, a show- and use field notes. His graduate and her un­ place home, the opera, tea dances, a re- dergraduate courses allowed manyjoint field expeditions; their spring and summer as- '•' FNH to his parents, late spring, 1935. ''^ 1 fotmd the book on the floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined an entire wall of Hammy's office. It is in­ ^^ Frances HamerstrtJin, Harrier, Hawk of the Marshes: scribed "To Frederick Nathan Hamerstrom, with the The Hawk That Is Ruled by a Mouse (Washington, 1986), 7. benediction of Paul Errington."

261 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 spectable job—all would be replaced by a of wildlife profusion. Then, in the Necedah life together, working, with their hands and area, 200 miles of drainage ditches and a land brains, all senses alert to the wild places boomlet in the first fifteen years of the twen­ they loved. When a job offer came from tieth century created dry marshes subject to rural Wisconsin, in a burned-over area, part frequent and repeated fires that annually mistreated marsh, part infertile sand, they consumed the underlying peat. Poplar and did not hesitate. That job was with the Re­ brush invaded the devastated peat; farmers settlement Administration, created by Pres­ found that the combination of low fertility ident Roosevelt's Executive Order 7027 of and frequent early frosts was deadly. Unable April 30, 1935. The 164 projects it funded to pay high drainage assessments, many sim­ nationwide were a small part of a wider ef­ ply walked away from their farms." fort: the National Industrial Recovery Act, Among local people, there was substan­ the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works tial agreement with the concept of mewing Progress Administration, the Federal De­ people off the land. Some wanted a return posit Insurance Corporation, and the to the wildlife-rich days of the recent past. Emergency Agricultural Act—instruments G. W. Taft, the Necedah postmaster, asked by which the New Deal hoped to mend the Leopold to use his position to get the area joblessness, the poverty, and the hopeless­ included in the federal plan: ness ofthe times.'" Rexford G. Tugwell was the first administrator. Wisconsin was part I am . . . much interested in . . . propa­ of Region Two, which was overseen by Rey­ gation of migratory and upland wild nolds Irwin Nowell, an agricultural econo­ bird life .... [The land] has been in­ mist from the University of Minnesota. The cluded into several drainage districts Resettlement Administration, beset by or­ and due to this have [sic] been made ganizational and jurisdictional problems, into deserts .... Our water levels have been lowered at least ten to twenty feet lasted until 1937, when itwas absorbed into and by so doing this vast natural the Farm and Home Administration."' sponge has been completely dried up. The Central Wisconsin Project consisted It is not so many years ago that we used of two sites—one west and north of Necedah, to have a wonderful flight of wild wa­ another around Black River Falls. The Win­ ter fowl, but now along with the blue­ nebago (now the Ho-Chunk Nation) had berry are a thing ofthe past."^ held that land until 1837, the year when the Chippewa, Sioux, and Winnebago ceded Local governments, their tax bases di­ most of northern and western Wisconsin and minished by abandoned farms, found that it the vast area was opened to settlers. At that was simply too costly to maintain schools and time it was forested, with tamarack and roads for the scattered families ofthe region, spruce in the swamps, pine and oak varieties to say nothing of relief payments for the on the varied upland soils. Bog meadows and poor. They agreed with the Wisconsin Con­ marshes abounded; wildlife was varied but servation Department that Necedah, where not copious. Early settlers logged off the good timber and established scattered farms, cre­ '' Michael J. (ioc, "The Wisconsin Dust Bowl," Wis­ ating clearings that briefly supported a period consin Magazine of History, 73:169-171 (Spring, 1990). "^ Leopold had sent FNH a copy of Taft's letter of March 5, 1934, along with a copy of his prompt, '•' Tom H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgiim: 'Fhe Life and March 10 reply (written on the back). He wrote: "In Times of Harold Icke.s, 1874-1952 (New York, 1990), cotiperation with General Immell of the Conserva­ 250-253. Watkins vividly details the conditions calling tion Department, we already have a couple of men for redress. making a survey of the marshlands in your part of "' United States Department of Agriculture, Farm Wisconsin with a view to recommending them as a Security Administration, History of Farm .Security Ad­ federal project." Below Leopold's signature is the des­ ministration. ignation, "In charge, Game Research."

262 Elva tI:imerscroni Paulsoti The Hamerstroms' own map of the Resettlement Administration districts where they labored during the Depression and Dust Bowl era.

263 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISI'ORY SUMMER, 1999

days and a night, adding to the thick cloud that carried 300 million tons of dirt all the way to the Atlantic seaboard. Dust Bowl folk­ lore maintains that President Roosevelt felt Wisconsin dust on his Wliite House carpet.'^" Storms continued to plague the whole sand county area. The sand buried fence rows and drifted high around the trunks of trees, smothering them. Housewives literally shoveled out their kitchens and back stoops, and snowplows cleared man-high drifts off roadways in the aptly named hamlet of Big Flats in Adams County. The Juneau County agricultural agent recorded that 30,000 acres of field crops had been destroyed by the sandstorm of May 9. In neighboring Waushara County, all farm foreclosures were EIv;l H;uilKansas, had disappeared from 20,000 acres, and al­ Texas, and Oklahoma moved northward most two million acres were damaged, cre­ into central Wisconsin, which had been pro­ ating the largest parcel of badly wind-eroded tected before then by its extensive marshes land east ofthe Mississippi. Experts declared and oak savannahs. Following a dry winter, the area "unfit for cultivation."-'- the sand, unprotected by snow, froze deep; cover crops of rye were crippled; spring N Juneau County, state and federal pur­ moisture ran off rather than sinking in. Ichase s bought most of the four townships April's rains were followed by drought—a drought that created exactly the bare, -" Ibid., 175, citing Marilyn Coffey, "The Dust parched land whose loose grains were sure Storms,," Natural History, 89:80 (February, 1978). Cof­ to move and blow in that terrible wind. The fey declares that the storm of May 9 led to Roosevelt's dark storiri hid the smoke of a fire that con­ promise to plant a 6,000-mile-long shelterbelt in the sumed fifteen thousand acres and twenty prairie states. The Hamerstroms, in Iowa, also felt the farmsteads situated on a vast drained marsh storm and sealed their windows with paper tape. They were to see the storm's aftermath and experi­ in Jackson County. '•' The winds blew for two ence later storms in Wisconsin. -' Albert E. Hanson addendtim to Waushara C^ount5''s agricultural extension agent report, 1937, p. '•' Goc, "Dust Bowl," Wisconsin Magazine of History, 16, in Annual Reports of County Agricultural Agents, 73:169, relates a telling account ofthe dismal history box 140, series 9/4/3, University ofWlsconsin Archives. of the drainage districts what covered—and de­ ^'- Goc, "Dust Bowl," Wisconsin Magazine of History, graded—stime 400,000 acres of central Wisconsin. 73:179.

264 Adams C:ounlv Histoncal Sociciv A 1925 dust storm 'in the Toxuri cf Dell Prairie, Adams County, a scene repeated often in central Wisconsin the year before the Hamerstroms arrived in the region. The Depression, drought, and dust storms helped prompt Resettlement Administration efforts. deemed suitable for wetland restoration.'^'' they grew, including young fiddlehead These were the lucky ones. The unfortunate ferns in the spring. Children grew heartily Town of Armenia, as sandy and damaged as sick of picking blueberries, blackberries, its neighbor to the north, was not included. and what they called "blackcaps"—the It did not contain enough wetlands to make small, seedy, but tasty wild black raspberries it worthy of restoration; indeed itwas so des­ that loaded the dense thickets of cane in olate that in 1947 it became a bombing some years. Men went "shining" or 'jack- range for the Wisconsin National Guard. lighting" deer at night, making sure every And in Necedah, the Resettlement Admin­ shot counted and the illegal venison made istration had only to purchase some 4,800 it to their tables. Some hung on. Others, acres, home to one hundred families, of defeated, gave up, abandoned the place whom four would remain. It would cost they had cleared, grubbed, and finally worn ,'13,200 per family to resettle them. out.'-^-' The families selected for removal were These were sturdy, self-reliant people— the remnants ofthe hopeful poor who had city people, by and large. They had come settled there thinking that they could grub from "from large industrial centers," as out a living. When low fertility, fire, and Hammy noted, and had set out as green­ frost made good crops scarce, they resorted horns, knowing little of fertilizer, liming, or to cutting railroad ties, harvesting the cover crops. They learned quickly to man­ bounty of the marshland—sphagnum age. Life was rudimentary. Only one in ten moss, blueberries, marsh hay, even wire- of their widely spaced homesteads was grass until the rug-making market for the on an improved road.^*' (Elsewhere in Wis­ latter disappeared.''^'* Wives canned what consin, half of the farms fronted on grav­ eled, graded roadways.) Their uninsulated

-^ Il>id., 17,5-178. -'* F. N. Hamerstrom, Jr., "Management Plan for '*^"' Goc, "Dust Bowl," Wisconsin Magazine (f History, the Central Wisconsin Game Project" (LD-W-5), 6-8, 73:167. in Hamerstrom familv collection. '^'•' Ibid., 171.

265 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 houses, hastily built of rough-sawn pine and lot of wood on it... . Wood di^opped plastered with coarse sand plaster, were to $3.25 the same fall . . . couldn't get made bearable through the long bitter win­ help so was out of luck .... A federal ters and late springs with the endless cords man came around ... by having our of oak they split and stacked for their place recommended for zoning by the stoves. They were served by outhouses and town board ... we [could be] moved the following summer .... Advised not dooryard pumps that often froze in winter to clear any more land but keep on They found what medical and social ser­ farming what we had .... I planted vices they could in small, scattered hamlets. cash crops, as hay was only $11 per ton Their children attended weather-beaten at that time .... Planted spuds. Bot­ one-room schoolhouses; a meager trickle of tom went out of market I lost flOO . .. eighth-grade graduates went to distant high on my potatoes .... Was unable to pay schools if they were able to arrange to seed loan. Took list to chairman of gro­ board "in the village." ceries needed. Told me to take it to the relief. I asked him why I should go on Everyone worked. Long winter evenings relief. I saw a lawyer and found I could gave the women time to quilt, mend, make do nothing. Was compelled to go on over. Bruised fruit was canned as fruit but­ relief and was ashamed of it. I want to ter. Black walnuts and hickory nuts were earn my living .... Had to sell cows, painstakingly cracked around the stove. got an average of about $20 apiece for Children picked green beans and cucum­ them. I would not take $100 for them bers for money for school clothes, and no­ now, high grade, high testing cat­ body complained when school was dfs- tle .... A year ago last winter with a missed for deer season or the potato family, 9 months old baby, another harvest. Fortunately "taters"—the staple child on the way, I got sick for a week. food—kept all winter: a family might store No road. Heavy snow up to hips. Wife couldn't go. I got out of a sick bed and up to 800 pounds on the earthen floor of walked 4 miles through that deep snow the cellar. As a village plumber observed, to borrow groceries to get along. I had "They ate anything that moved—coon, tur­ to sit down in snow several times and tle, squirrel, frogs—even cranes." rest on the way back. Just was able to Toughened by adversity, scornful of soft­ make it—cold freezing weather .... If ness, intolerant of airs, these "sand landers" I should not of made it, what would possessed a perhaps extreme form of De­ of happened to my wife and child pression Era virtues: a powerful work ethic, out there alone where no one showed frugality, the ability to make do. Pride and up for a week or two at a time. Please . . . consider my case .... I am independence were etched deep into local not on relief and have not been since consciousness. To "go on the town" was a last fall, and do not want any more of disgrace. A letter preserved by historians of it, if there is any possible way out.-' the Resettlement Administration delineates in sharp, painful detail the plight and pride of one beset by bad luck and Depression The many irieetings held in the area in economics: 1934 by University ofWlsconsin Agricultural

I worked more or less on the home place, till I was 28 years old, then went ^' Cjhristiansen and Staniforth, Wisconsin Resettle­ into the spray game. Made good until ment Program, 46-47. L. G. Sorden, Northern Wisconsin the depression came. Everything went Settler Relocation Project (mimeographed report), on the books, more or less, mostly proudly cites the $15,000 per year saved by closing more. Can't expect to collect it any rural schools, cutting relief costs, and the "renewed more .... [I] made work for myself by hope given to these people by their removal from iso­ buying the acres . . . not ideal farm, a lated areas." A copy is in family hands.

266 CORNEU: THE HAMERS'IROMS

Extension staff may well have influenced dooryard for the load of cut oak they town governments to encourage the planned bought from a neighbor. They unpacked departures, but it was this man's desperate their books and field gear, stored their city circumstances, not politics or rhetoric, that clothes in boxes in the attic, and set to work brought him to seek "any possible way out." in the late fall of 1935. He was Project Game Manager at a salary of $2,400 a year. HESE conditions, these hard years were His colleague, Fred Zimmerman, recol­ Ta proving ground for the Hamerstroms, lects, with a smile, "We called him Fritz. fresh initiates into the science of game man­ They were one happy couple: he had a de­ agement and determined to do research. gree, and ajob .... I came in one day when They wanted to lead the simple life close to her Mother was there. She had been cry­ Nature in wild places. They hoped to prac­ ing, I think on account ofthe house." tice, and teach, conservation in a project They had moved into a bleak and daunt­ that would restore conditions for suitable ing environment. The drought had caused species. This was not to be. Here, where hu­ conditions severe enough to attract na­ man life was itself rudimentary, they prac­ tional reporters. One famous journalist ticed their newly acquired skills in studying wrote of Wisconsin's "pinch-faced children" wildlife, but their most significant learning and "starving, bawling cattle."^^ Even with may well have been of the frailty and error a helpful rain in June following the great that human effort brings to problems on dust storm, three-quarters of the farmers in the scale of the ruined township of Nece­ neighboring Adams County, and half of dah, and of the deficiencies in their readi­ those in Portage County, a county away to ness for such a project. the northeast, qualified for drought relief. But for the moment it meant trans­ Modest payments from counties encour- planting their small store of belongings to a conveniently empty old farmhouse they '-** Goc, "DtistBowl," Wisconsin Magazine of History, rented. It had a wood stove, a sound roof 73:163, quoting Paul De Kruif, "If We Get Rain," and windows, and a handy shed in the Ladies' Home fournal, September, 1934, p. 8.

&^k;-;-^

Drifted sand in central Wisconsin. Conditions like these ruined the chances of many rural residents lo make a living.

267 w ' *JC-..

W i^Si^^^- "';--.••:'•••''

I Hiinu'islroiTi Paiilson The unpainted, rural Necedah house into which the Hamerstroms moved in 1935, ivith a wood stove for heat and an outdoor pump for water. aged soil conservation practices; the hourly Fran Hamerstrom, iir her distinctive pay offered for planting shelterbelts with way, remarked tartly to me in the late state-supplied seedlings was a godsend to 1980's, "You see those men as heroic; we the many farmers who could not qualify for saw them as villains! They helped destroy the payments for the required practices. many of the wild places we wanted to Extraordinary efforts by county agents— save." Her reaction may have reflected even when their jobs were threatened by years of seeing woods cleared and marshes the lack of county revenues to pay them— drained in the land surrounding their ameliorated the lives of some residents, Plainfield acreage rather than her reac­ whether by improving production of home tions in the thirties. But it illustrates ex­ gardens or by organizing dramatic enter­ actly the gulf between the expectations of tainments to lighten the dismal times. But the ahead-of-their-time environmentalists they could not solve the underlying prob­ and those of local people. That gulf con­ lems. In the words of Floyd Read, sturdy tinued throughout their lives, and, in­ survivor of those times, "We were all poor, deed, continues today. W'e, who sometimes but some were dirt poor Theyjust couldn't grow weary of the contention that sur­ afford what the County Agents said to rounds so many environmental problems, do. "29 might do well to remember that the De­ pression was a time of even more severe disccjrd. Have the extremes of feeling '-'' His extended family evcnttiallv owned some 1,000 acres of irrigated land on the Leola marsh. about Franklin Roosevelt and his pro-

268 CORNELI: THE HAMERSTROMS grams—from hatred to near idolatry— accurate maps of the site did not exist at been matched in recent times?'"' that time. Mapping meant miles of walk­ But in dismal 1935, Hammy set to work ing and exploring. "Any trail you can with characteristic optimism and zeal. First travel by car is a road," said W. T. C]ox, for­ he must establish what wildlife was still mer Minnesota state forester, who was in present. Not only groups of species—such charge of forestry and wildlife for the as avian predators and fur bearers—but in­ whole site.^^ Fran helped make the first dividual ones like prairie chickens, sharp- real road map of part of the area, a vast ex­ tailed and ruffed grouse, sandhill cranes, panse of interlocking trails which often great horned owls, white-tailed deer must seemed to lead nowhere in that thinly be surveyed. Surveying and recording populated flatness. They and their crews their findings would require maps—and mapped 7,400 acres. Hammy wrote for advice to Franklin S. Henika, regional game manager for the •'" I recall the response of a gifted but illiterate me­ chanic I knew in Madison in 1957 whom I asked Wisconsin Conservation Department. He about good presidents. "There has only been one had completed mapping the main roads. president! You know who . . . Roosevelt," he growled. Should he include the hundreds of hay And as a counselor at a Girl Scout camp near Flint, trails? It would take enormous amounts of Michigan, in 1945, 1 knew an eleven-year-old named time, even should his men be able to do Nira. I asked the source of her name. "The National Industrial Recovery Act," she replied promptly, and proudly. "It gave my dad ajob." I knew nothing ofthe ^' Frances Hamerstrom, Strictly for tlie Chickens act at the time. (Ames, Iowa, 1980), 7.

•*

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Elva Hamerstrom Paulson Franklin S. Henika (left), regional game manager for the Wisconsin Conservation Department, with the Hamerstroms, autumn, 1935. 269 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 some of the required mapping of wildlife bors. Sitting at our kitchen table, he would species and plant cover at the same time. compose the letters they asked him to He had collected one hundred plants, and write. Some of the Poles were uncertain of a variety of seeds; and, in a portent of his their English. Others, years away from future work, he said he intended to follow grammar school, had replaced book learn­ up on Leopold's very early investigations ing with survival skills." into prairie chicken behavior.'^'*^ He established a liaison with the Black HE Hamerstroms' "neighbor time" was River Falls site; certain tasks applied to both Tlimited by the urgency of their work. locations. He found good colleagues there, Their days ran from dawn to dusk and were such as Fred Zimmerman, who, like the never dull. Frequently, Hammy sent Fran Hamerstroms, went on to make a career in out in the field while he painstakingly com­ conservation. Zimmerman speaks proudly piled immaculate, handwritten data for the of his service in the Resettlement Adminis­ required reports; at other times, they con­ tration: ducted tours for county board members or bigwigs from the Resettlement Administra­ We did worthwhile work. We picked tion. They spent an astonishing amount of places for future state parks, set them time in the field.-^'^ They started trapping aside as conservation areas and im­ and banding programs; established experi­ proved them. There was lots of tree mental food patches, fallow plots, and planting, mostly of jack and Norway cover plantings; and planned for the winter pine. We got work crews from the Mis­ feeding of a variety of wildlife. They located sion to the Winnebago. Some settlers the nesting sites of pheasants and grc:)use were successfully moved to Trem­ pealeau and Dane counties. We'd get over 24,900 acres. They found eighty-six together at meetings, hear reports "booming grounds" where prairie chicken and share ideas .... [We had] a con­ cocks conducted their spring displays. They genial team. plotted the areas most favored by the birds of prey—owls and hawks of every variety— Zimmerman was able to save enough and searched the ditches for otter, muskrat, from his salary of Sl 66.66 a month to fi­ mink, fox, and other fur bearers. For two nance his Ph.D., and was keenly aware of years, every sighting of every sharp-tailed the contrast between his situation and that and ruffed grouse was color-coded on a of the families around him living on $150 map. They collected plants and located cash a year. Fran and Hammy actually lived plant communities. The food-weed popu­ in much the same manner as did the "iso­ lations on thirty-five plots—some plowed, lated farm population." They were neigh­ some plowed and disked, and some left fal­ bors and friends, people who walked low—were painstakingly evaluated, tabu­ through the woods bearing presents for the lated, and compared to cultivated corn, newcomers: winter squash, pumpkins, pota­ millet, buckwheat, and soybeans.•^'' All of toes—and questions. They were asked for this was eventually distilled into Hammy's advice in unexpected areas. Childless them­ selves, they were queried about birth con­ trol: there were far too many children, and .S3 Frederick Hamerstrom, "Wildlife Research on many of them died. "We loved those the Central Wisconsin Game Project," October 12, people," Fran said fiercely. "It wasn't long 1936, an eleven-page report FNH prepared for Silas before Hammy was fighting for our neigh- Knudson to read at a meeting of the Resettlement Administration's conservation unit in Milwaukee in December, 1936. •''' FNH to W. T. Cox, regional forester-biologist, FNH to Franklin S. Henika, October 18, 1935. October 31, 1936, pp. ,3-4.

270 CORNELI: THE HAMERSTROMS

Hammy in the field, December, 1936. final management plan of twenty pages, Administration. Even the workers saw the densely packed with overview and tables, flaw at once. "It was a welfare project," one and with twenty-three separate, detailed re­ declared. "The idea was to keep the men ports on various surveys and programs ap­ occupied. We were doing things that didn't pended. matter a damn. We built quail shelters. The He could not avoid seeing fundamental quail didn't use them. And big deer shel­ problems in the resettlement design. W. T. ters out of jack pine. The deer never came Cox had asked Hammy to pay particular at­ near them." Fred Zimmerman agreed. His tention to fire lanes, the narrow alleys that careful records of two winters of feeding had been cut in an attempt to control the proved that shelters shaped roughly like ever-present menace of fire. "They crisss- wagon wheels were of "no use whatever," crossed the area with them, and some of but that racks (crude adaptations of farm­ them are useless. Tell me what you find." ers' racks for feeding hay to cattle), brush Hammy found certain lanes impassable. He piles, windfall shelters, and lean-tos could walked the "most uninviting" soft sand ones, be effective if they were suitably located. No or inspected them through field glasses. He one knew exactly what would work; high found no warning signs for missing bridges, rates of disappointment and failure were no consideration of existing ditches and the rule in those early days of learning how proposed flooding. He questioned: Surely to practice conservation research. missing bridges were a hazard for firefight­ Hammy soon realized that paperwork ers? And who would maintain the lanes af­ and bureaucratic detail would consume ter the relief labor camps were aban­ him unless he designed a special effort for doned—as they were, in 1937? his field studies. A chance meeting showed "Relief labor camps." The phrase speaks him a way out. On New Year's day, 1936, he to the basic dilemma of the Resettlement chatted with the truck driver for a crew of

271 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 laborers out of Black River Falls—Os Matt- son. Hammy discovered that Os knew game and liked his straightforward ways. (It was Os who had described the flaw in the Re­ settlement structure.) Hammy assigned him to Fran, who, as an unpaid worker, was continuing to collect owl pellets. She noted his keen observations, and his ability to learn. Hammy made him foreman, which meant a salary of $50 a month instead of $40. Soon Hammy had three "foremen"— Os, Bud Truax, and Jimmy Blake—chosen ostensibly to direct others, but really to pro­ vide him with his own research crew. For in fact, he and Fran were running an informal school of wildlife research methodology. He and his counterpart in Black River Falls, a Mr. Schunke, set up a "research and in­ Elva Hamerstrom Paulson vestigational division" ("if we may be called Os Mattson, one of the Hamerstroms' key associates in the such," as his report wryly stated) in April, 1930's and again later in the 1950's when this picture 1936, using both Truax and Blake, plus was taken. Fcrr years, Os and his wife Mary shared houses Zimmerman, and two biologists from Site with the Hamerstroms. 2, half time.-'-' They focused on fur bearers on both sites.-'*'' requisite."-" Fran, too, admired Jimmy Jimmy Blake, who was part-Indian, lived Blake's woodcraft: "He knew all about in Necedah. He was put in charge of three tracking, moving quietly through the crews of two men each. Hammy saw at once woods, what signs to watch for." Hunting that he knew the marshes and woods far with him gave her new insights. When she better than anyone else, and simply needed rebuked him for shooting ducks on the wa­ a chance to put his knowledge to work. ter, he rejoined, "If you was counting shells, Thus, quite naturally and simply, Hammy you wouldn't be practicing all them wing started using ordinary people as re­ shots." It was a lesson in frugality the searchers. It was a precept that Leopold Hamerstroms never forgot. preached: "Good people can be trained anywhere. A formal education isn't a pre- OW Hammy's field crews did excellent Nwork. His instructions for the fur survey show his meticulous approach. Pairs of men, 3.1 prederick Hamerstrom, "Wildlife Research on the Central Wisconsin Game Project," and an un­ supplied with the essential compass and a dated letter (Hammy didn't date personal letters in stenographer's notebook, would walk de­ those days) to his father Os Mattson went on to a dis­ signated ditches, streams, flowages, and tinguished career in conservation. Scrupulously fair, marshes. On the top page of the open note­ Hammy, after he left the Resettlement Administra­ book they were to sketch landmarks such as tion, named Millard Truax and James Blake as co­ roads or notable trees, at a scale of one inch authors on the papers for which they had collected data. per mile, and in.scribe date and location ""' Frederick Hamerstrom, "Wildlife Research on (township, range, and section). The lower the Central Wisconsin Game Project," 2. Another page was for field notes describing the fur document, "Report of the Fur Inventory" (LD-Wl-5, signs found: the traces, dens, droppings, August 23, 1937), records inventories from April 6 through July 28, with 1,800 work hours at a cost of $862.26. •" Meine, Aldo Eeofmld, 88.

272 CORNELI: THE HAMERSTROMS tracks, tufts of fur, remnants of meals, and so beaver dens built in ditch bank. 4 forth left by skunk, otter, fox, beaver, and beaver dens and very much cuttings "rats" (as muskrat were commonly called), or along ditch. One otter slide and drop­ even, in those days, by wolves and badgers. pings. One large rat house. Saw 8 sharp-tail along fir lane west of Bear He sketched the scheme for his crews and Bluff. Also one fresh wolf track and made sure they knew what he wanted. The much wolf sign, along the fire lane results—Jimmy Blake's notes—still make and around the bluff. good reading, just as they were written: June 14. Sec. 2. T20N-R1E. Caught and examined a spotted fawn and let May 6. Sec.3. T19N-R2E. Saw 3 deer it go. It stood about 1V9 feet high and along ditch. Some old beaver signs was about 22 inches long. Legs were and 1 small beaver dam. It seems that about the size of a man's small finger at this time . . . rats and mink are to and hoofs . . . the size of a man's small be found mostly along small and stub finger nail. Weight—about 8 pounds. ditches . . . [where] there is better Was very small and staggered when it feed for both, as the rats get young ran, got caught in a bunch of small grass sprouts and water bulbs that do willows and could hardly get free. Was not grow in deep water. The mink lying down in some tall grass, but out feed on the frogs and minnows that where the sun could beat down upon are plentiful in the small streams. it. Got within three feet of it and it Deer are changing from a dark gray never moved except to get its head as to a dark yellowish color. We can tight to the ground as possible. nearly step on grouse before they fly but can't locate a nest. June 18.'Sec. 1. T19N-R2E. No change on Little Yellow ditch. Fresh June 2. Sec. 23. T19N-R1E. Skunks badger and raccoon tracks along dug out a nest of turtle eggs on ditch ditch, no other change. Saw a marsh bank, and ate them. Saw one sharp- hawk swoop down and light on a tail and one yellow leg. small knoll. When I got over to it I June 4. Sec 33. T21N-R1E. Four found it had destroyed the nest of a beaver houses—one extra large. 3 bird, killing four young ones. It had partly eaten three of the birds. The birds were small, about the size of a young robin. Had no feathers except a fringe along the back of the wings, a light blue color. Nest was made of fine grass and was well concealed in some rather tall, heavy grass, on the ground. Rat and skunk sign on ditch going through southwest corner-''^

This painstaking record allowed Hammy to make clear the parlous condition in which he found the area wildlife. "The

•^^ The notes are in the Hamerstrom family collec­ tion. Blake's considerable abilities, displayed in these field notes, were lost when his wife, a non-Indian ("the Hamerslrom Paulson meanest woman I ever saw," said Os Mattson tren­ fimmy Blake, another associate and a man of American- chantly), insisted that he move to Chicago to make Indian heritage whose woodcraft Fran admired, at money in a factory job. Fran grieved; Hammy shook Necedah, 1938. his head: "We can't replace him."

273 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 game and fur populations . . . are sadly in need of assistance," he recorded. En­ croaching brush gave both foxes and sharp- tailed grouse the advantage over prairie chickens; low water explained the dimin­ ished numbers of waterfowl and muskrat. Deer and quail were increasing—deer to the point of winter starvation, he warned— but populations subject to cycles (rabbits, ruffed grouse, and prairie chickens) needed further study. Otter, mink, skunk, badger, fox, and coyote were duly noted.'^^ That first year, the task was one of dis­ covery and excitement. Their home, how­ ever primitive, was harmonious, and always lively. Colleagues and visitors came to their ramshackle house. Paul Errington came from Iowa. His scientific caution puzzled relatives. Hammy's younger brother, visit­ ing along with Fran's young brothers, ob­ served, "I noticed he never said a simple yes or no. It was always T strongly suspect.' That drove me crazy." Holidays meant little change in Fran's routine: she had owl pel­ Elva Hamerstrom Paulson lets to go through. Her 1936 Thanksgiving Hammy inspecting geneml cover for mallard nests. dinner was typical. The biologists she had May 30, 1936. invited to a celebration arrived to find her sorting owl pellets on a small table covered and a bias against married women taking a with little piles of fur, shards of bone, and "man's job,""^^ Hammy had arranged for the crisp remnants of insects. She alter­ her to work (unpaid) full time, and had nated this task with kitchen chores, contin­ provided her with her own crew. Soon she uing her separating and sorting. "And embarked on a study of raptors. She found then," as one said in humorous resignation, marsh hawks (harriers as they are now "she would go back to her cooking." A per­ called) in residence, counted migrating manent part of the Hamerstrom legend red-tails, and noted the less common rose from such details, often remembered rough4egged hawks, goshawks, and smaller fondly, but sometimes in shock, by those species: kestrels, sharp-shins, and Cooper's. with whom they came in contact. It was not Raptors had fascinated her since girlhood, so much that the Hamerstroms were prickly and in subsequent years her interest re­ or eccentric—only that the distance, both sulted in several books and a considerable literal and in habits of mind, between them reputation. and "ordinary folk," including their rela­ tives, continued to widen.

Fran was particularly content in her *' In the late 1950's, 1 was told that the best work. In those days of anti-nepotism rules teacher in the Hancock grade school was—gasp!— "living in sin." 1 found that, forced to choose between a legal marriage to a struggling farmer and a job, she sensibly simply lived with him. Jobs were for men; .TO Frederick Hamerstrom, "Wildlife Research on married women teachers were fired in that school dis­ the Central Wisconsin Game Project," 2. trict (and many others) in the 1930's.

274 CORNELI: THE HAMERSTROMS

Fran was acutely aware that, as a woman, on. Hammy was pleased. "The services of she was suspect to her presumed superiors, our ex officio member, Mrs. Hamerstrom, the men, and to the public. She was deter­ have been of such value that it would be mined to prove herself. No task was too most improper not to acknowledge them," daunting. One winter morning Hammy he wrote in his formal report to adminis­ sent her out alone on a game survey, de­ trators. Fran never let up. Her reward was spite a regulation that said everyone must her own satisfaction, and her husband's go in pairs. He provided a map showing a praise. blazed trail going across a stream. She would not admit to apprehension. When OTH of them reveled in their work, she came to the stream, she saw she must Band in the daily riches of their envi­ give up, or swim. She stripped, swam across, rons—the new sprouts of grass, the signs of dressed, and ran to warm up. Avid to mas­ playful otters, the muskrats carrying grass ter all possible ways of educating the pub­ in their mouths, the occasional wolf tracks, lic, she began contributing brief educa­ the glassy water behind beaver dams. tional notes to the local newspaper Hammy wrote his parents: concerning various conservation topics— the deer glut, the ethics of hunting, and so [T]his country . . . called barren by many ... is beautiful. Mixed jack pine and scrub oak, with some other pines and oaks, on the sand islands, broken up by innumerable grassy meadows and marshes; in the creek bottoms bunchberry, Clintonia, waist-high ferns, Virginia creeper, birches, maples, alders, willows. Everywhere purple and white asters, goldenrod, and blazing star, many blueberry

--^ja-^-- patches, some wild cranberry, leather- leaf bogs and an infinite variety of plants new to us. We have seen only the fall flora—what must it be like in spring! There are sphagnum beds and small remnants of tamarack swamps. Even the solid stands of pop­ ple—which come in after fires—are simply lovely in the purple light of winter evening 41

That delight in nature and love of the land sustained and energized them, even as they became more and more aware of the failings of the Resettlement Administra­ tion. Fran expressed her indignation that "they sent photographers to record their accomplishments so they asked us where Elva Hamerstrom Paulson they could find the worst shanties, the F'ran making her way into the field with the frame and poorest families. One mother complained canvas cover for an inspection blind. Hammy consistently to me, 'Those men wouldn't even let me praised her in reports: "The services of our ex officio member, Mrs. Hamerstrom, have been of such value that it would be most improper not to acknowledge them. " '" FNH to his parents, fall, 1936.

275 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1999

the papers. "But I need the money right away. I gotta get my wife to Mayo for treat­ ment." The official reassured him, it would not take long. But months went by and the money did not come; the trip to the clinic could not be made in time. "That beautiful '%** young woman died," Fran recalled fifty years later, still unresigned to bureaucratic bungling. The Hamerstroms determined to right such wrongs. In 1936 they wrote a scathing expose which they took to Aldo Leopold in Madison. "Who is this for?" he inquired after read­ %• ing it. " The Saturday Evening Post." "You are right, of course. This is well written." He paused. "It would surely have an impact." He refilled his pipe, tamping it *f-^^*; down deliberately before speaking. "But I'm going to ask you not to pub­ lish it." It was years later before they understood. Hammy on a controlled burn in Iowa at the end of his Leopold was telling them they were too student days in 1935. Burns, he wrote his parents a year new, too unknown to become crusaders. later, produced "solid stands of popple . . . simply lovely in "Leopold," Fran said later, "had an un­ the fjurple light of luinter evening. " canny sense of timing." Silently, doggedly, they returned to the farmhouse, to the wash the children's jaws!' They whizzed simple life they had sought. right by the more prosperous farm houses." Since the sand county farmers could be HROUGH the harsh winter, like their moved only if they chose to go, local bu­ Tneighbors, they cut wood with a two- reaucrats with federal goals to meet made man saw, pumped water into zinc buckets, promises they could not always keep. Farm­ closed off all the rooms except the kitchen ers paid the price. One family on the Hoff­ to conserve heat, adjusted to the isolation man marsh agreed to sell. Expecting a and the workload. When snowbound they quick move, they sold their small store continued with the game census—on snow- of machinery and their livestock, down to shoes. The routine was unvarying and dirt- the chickens—then waited for payment simple: load wood, stoke the fire, rack your through a long, harsh winter without cash brain about what to cook with the remain­ or sufficient food. Nor was their case the ing staples, put on layers of clothes, socks, worst; others waited over a year for the set­ scarves, hats, gloves; bind on snowshoes; tlement. come home rosy-cheeked and exhilarated; Chris Mattson was one who refused to write up your field notes, warm up yester­ sell. "I love this place. I can do with $150.00 day's stew, fall asleep over supper, stoke the cash a year. I'm gonna make it." Then he fire, and crawl into bed. As they observed, learned that his wife had cancer. Grimly he "There were good books in the house for marched into the Resettlement office in the long winter evenings. They stayed on Necedah and told the official he would sign the shelf unread."

276 CORNELL THE HAMERS'IROMS

Then the pump froze solid. Nothing rector of field operations, he could not they tried would defrost it, and they were remedy the clumsy and unfocused admin­ reduced to using prodigious amounts of istration of the project. He was bound by precious firewood just to melt snow for wa­ the rules and strictures of distant bureau­ ter to drink and cook with. They were saved crats. When, for example, delivery of vital by a neighbor boy who happened by. He tools for his workers was delayed for asked for rags, and kerosene. Debutantes months, he could do nothing except im­ didn't save rags; instead Fran brought her pose what was called a "continuous game favorite velvet evening dress down from the inventory," which stipulated that his men attic. tramp in long lines through marsh and woods, more like game beaters than sur­ I would never wear it again. I hurried veyors, censusing whatever game they came downstairs whistling and handed it to across. Of course, in noisy formation, they Andrew .... He nodded and wrap­ saw little or none. ped my dress around the pump . . . poured kerosene, soaking the dress The frustrations mounted. Perhaps the again and again. Then he reached in last straw came in January, 1937, in the very his shirt pocket for a match. I went depth of the Depression. Hammy had back into the kitchen and watched painstakingly listed trees and shrubs for the flames leap high .... Frederick spring planting to supplement existing stood a little apart, aristocratic and el­ stock of wild grape, woodbine, and prickly egant, even in his worn field clothes. ash. He asked for 500 thornapples, 250 I could see his fine black eyebrows black locust, 750 junipers, 750 sumac, 750 and his small straight nose. He wasn't wild plum, 4,500 maples, and 5,000 white watching the flames. He watched my dress, and when it was gone, he still cedars to "serve as nuclei for natural dis­ looked at the pump. His face was in­ persal . . . [and] spreading" of species that scrutable. would provide feed and shelter for wildlife.'*'^ The regional office delayed That blaze at the pump marked the Necedah's order; his stock arrived long past Hamerstroms' final watershed. Their life the planting date and shriveled in the sum­ was here; they would never go back to that mer heat. Then the vital, ongoing mapping "rather charming mode of life we had work slowed. Accurate mapping depends known before . . . that odd little half hope on trained use of the compass, and the in­ that we might combine the old with the dispensable compassmen were found not new.'"*'"^ Instead, somewhere, they would to be on the relief rolls.^^ Men on relief had manage a portion of the public domain so hiring priority ("work, not welfare"), so the that sandhill cranes and prairie chickens experienced mappers had to be let go. would be plentiful, the fur harvest planned, To the Hamerstroms' relief—indeed, and the deer population controlled to perhaps at their request—Aldo Leopold avoid overbrowsing and starvation. It was paid the project an official visit (It may to take many years of further experience to have been about that time that he encour­ teach them that they could only achieve aged Hammy to join his fledgling graduate success in much more focused, more program in his new game management de­ species-specific, endeavors. partment in Madison.) Certainly his blunt Hammy had recognized, perhaps as early as that first winter, that Necedah was not likely to be the place for him. As di- « FNH to R. I. Nowell, January 21, 1937. " Compassmen established the bearings of the landmarks, ItJcated them exactly, and supervised crews to ensure the accuracy, and hence usefulness, Frances Hamerstrom, Strictly for the Chickens, 12. of the finished product.

277 t9d

Elva Ilamersuoni Paulson Frances Flint Hamerstrom in an evening gown on the stairs of her family home in Milton, Massachusetts. She sacrificed such a gown to burn as a rag around their frozen Necedah farmhouse pump. Insert: The pump which froze and to ivhichFran sacrificed her heritage of evening gowns.

278 CORNEU: THE HAMERSTROMS

report following his visit to Site 1 validated determine. The common men who pay our Hammy's dissatisfaction. It was a pity, taxes are our judges, and we need their sup­ Leopold WTOte, that after an expensive deer port if these programs are to continue, and census, no kill record was kept in 1936. we must build visible things for them to see Plain waste, he said: "It is a loophole you to get their future support.'"**' could throw a cat through." He put his fin­ Hammy wrote his parents: ger on the problem. The resettlement pro­ gram was too complex and many-faceted I grow daily more discouraged with for any one man to be aware of another's the mess which the government in­ findings. He called for a policy that would sists upon making of this job, and see suppc5rt, indeed require, publication of re­ the chance of any worthwhile result becoming more and more remote. search findings. As he said, "One effect of We have made arrangements to go to not insisting on publication is that you have the University to work under Leopold gathered a monumental mass of data, little next autumn, and would pull out of ofwhich is shaken down into usable theo­ this present mix-up tomorrow if we ries, policies, or rules of practice. This al­ felt we could do ,so with dignity .... It ways happens when fact-gathering is not ac­ has been made very plain that this is companied by digestion of the data. primarily a relief proposition which Publication . . . [forces] digestion."'''^ means that any benefits to game are of rather secondary importance .... But Leopold's recommendation was ig­ About the most useful thing I can ac­ nored. Hammy's detailed studies were complish is to prevent as many of the judged "unsuitable," as well as too expen­ most blatant mistakes as possible— sive. Silas Knudson, one of his superiors, and there is little enough I can do wrote in rejoinder that "work of this type there .... At least we are saving a little should be carried on by some University or money toward our graduate work.*^ other agency instead of [one] set up for a relief program. This [expense] would be good fuel for some . . . group who would EARS later, Hammy spoke his mind want to take a . . . crack at Resettlement or Yabout the Resettlement Administra­ the present administration .... My idea of tion. Its governing principle was totally un­ the type of research to be carried on . . . scientific, he said. A senator in Washington would be of a less scientific nature—a study might call the headquarters with a request perhaps such as being made of our streams to return Necedah to the pristine waterfowl as to what food . . . [or] oxygen is or is not area it once had been. The district and re­ there." gional offices would promptly mandate a The Hamerstroms were to hear this call priority for creating waterfowl habitat. "It for "useful" work again and again in the was perfectly plain by then that prairie years to come. The arguments were always chickens were having trouble and were los­ the same. Improved trout streams would ing range very rapidly, but flooding out the meet public approval, but research on such best prairie chicken meadows to make wa­ topics as defining desirable aquatics and terfowl ponds was quickly approved." A sub­ discovering specific, seasonal trout feeding dued shudder accompanied his final word: habits was received with sarcasm. In the "Dreadful!" words of his Necedah supervisor, "what Clearly, in 1937 neither the politicians dessert all wild life species desire . . . the nor the public was ready for research- universities or Biological Survey [should]

''fi Silas Knudson to R. I. Nowell, May 24, 1937. ' Aldo Leopold to Silas J. Knudson, July 20, 1937. '^ FNH to his parents, spring or summer, 1937.

279 1 1 DffiSR YABDS

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281 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 wildlife refuge, covering roughly the same partment of Natural Resources. He was area the Hamerstroms studied, now draws project leader, she a part-time conserva­ 120,000 visitors a year, most of them tion aide in the Prairie Grouse Manage­ hunters, fishers, canoeists, and birdwatch­ ment Research Unit. Their combination ers. Although Hammy's priorities and vi­ home, field station, hotel, and raptor sion were reflected in the government's haven was in the Town of Plainfield, in agenda, the Hamerstroms are not men­ northwestern Waushara County—the very tioned in current public information about heart of what had been Depression- the refuge—understandably, since its des­ stricken Wisconsin. ignation as one of more than 500 national The area had benefited from the New refuges occurred well after their departure. Deal. To be sure, unpaved roads still Still, people living today in Necedah re­ stretched through reaches of orphaned member the Hamerstroms, and were influ­ farmland fringed by scrub oak and scrag- enced by them—another illustration ofthe gly jack pine windbreaks. The human ripple effect of their tenure in the sand population was even thinner than it had counties ofWlsconsin.''*' been in the 1930's, for postwar growth in urban jobs made the harsh life of the AS for Frederick and Frances Hamer- farmer an unattractive choice.'' But some l\. Strom, those Depression years of 1935 of the gray, unpainted farmhouses and to 1937 served as an invaluable appren­ sagging barns now were served by the lo­ ticeship. They experienced firsthand the cal, nine-year-old rural electric coopera­ necessities of thorough research and the tive. Solid brick community buildings, dissemination of results. The ultimate ef­ built by the WPA, dignified the main fect of the human tragedies they witnessed streets of many small towns. Yellow buses deepened their natural empathy with the carried farm children to consolidated underdog and left them permanently dis­ schools and made the bus owners impor­ trustful of large bureaucracies. The criti­ tant figures in local economies. What had cism of scientifically unaware superiors been called "the great dead heart of Wis­ taught them the crucial need for conser­ consin" was beating—albeit a bit un­ vation education. All of this served them steadily—once more, although attitudes well. and habits of living had changed very Hammy's doctoral research ("A Study of litde. Wisconsin Prairie Grouse: Breeding There were still wild places. The Hamer­ Habits, Winter Foods, Endoparasites, and strom field station lay between the great Movements," 1941) took them back to the Buena Vista marsh (the site of many prairie Leola marsh, in northeastern Adams chicken booming grounds) and their County. They learned how to locate, trap, beloved Leola marsh, which was already mark, and count the wary birds. Hammy's showing signs of the coming human jug­ wartime service as an aviation psychologist gernaut. Here, land could still be bought from 1943 to late 1945, and ajob as curator for $20 or $30 an acre. Entrepreneurs were of the University of Michigan's game re­ moving in. Many brought quickly maturing serve, kept them away from the area until canning crops or beef cattle into the low 1949, when they joyously returned to Wis­ areas, previously prime wildlife habitat. It consin and jobs with what is now the De- was the Hamerstroms' fate, and their prin­ cipal distinction, to halt this march of

^^ U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, The Necedah National Wildlife Refuge and National Wildlife Refuges: A Visitor's Guide, author's •''' Goc, "Dust Bowl," Wisconsin Magazine of History, collection. 73:164, 187.

282 CORNEIJ: THE HAMERSEROMS

"progress" before it destroyed what was from almost certain extinction. That then perhaps the best prairie chicken habi­ plump, deep-chested, swift-winged grouse tat in the country. thrived, in pre-settlement days, on the They viewed as a disaster what most prairies. Its concentration in the shrunken people regarded as necessary and desir­ range of central Wisconsin made this able: the expansion of ever-larger, ever­ wildest of wild creatures, as hunters dubbed more-mechanized farming into previously it, a major actor in the conservation drama "unused" land. The conservation biologists in which the Hamerstroms starred. (for that is what they had become) wanted Hammy's crucial role was, first, to establish prudent, planned regard for interaction sound data on population, breeding, nest with the total environment as a whole. Flex­ brood cover needs, predators, and move­ ibility, ingenuity, and perseverance enabled ments, and then to design and engineer a them develop new approaches: to land use, new concept, the "checkerboard reserve" to public relations, and to financial sup­ that would provide precisely the necessary port. They staffed their effort, partly with habitat. thousands of volunteers, partly by a system Game preserves customarily embrace of apprentices (christened by Fran with a many acres or square miles. But as all word she coined: "gabboons") who lived hunters know, the places to expect a good with them, worked with them, and learned .shot are at the edge, not in the center, of a way of life from them. Their fortuitous any forest, woodlot, cropland, or marsh. melding of research expertise with hospi­ Edges, declared Aldo Leopold, were "the tality and high spirits saved the prairie building blocks of game management." chicken in Wisconsin—and, by extension, He designed conservation plans with throughout much of its existing range— farmland and its priceless edges as a key to

Visual Materials Atcbive, lot 33()i8 A prairie chicken, a membei of the species which the Hamerstroms and thousands of volunteers saved from extinction through their work in the Plainfield area from the 1940's forward.

283 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1999

,-j J • 1 • • • I ^~~] }TI • 1 • . 1 • J" 1—• •!|: ' K iT i ; I • 1 H • 1 • "'• P ^ I • • r • "• J^ / • m • H • TT• ' •^ r Elvallaiiifisli. The "scatter patte)~n " scheme for habitat management devised try Frederick Hamerstrom and adopted in the early 1950's, contrasted with the less efficient "block management" scheme. It is being applied in countries where the rainforest is shrinking. wildlife management.''- Hammy, in turn, concept that is being applied today in designed a new, flexible kind of reserve, a Costa Rica and other places where the "checkerboard" of existing farms, with tropical rain forest is shrinking. their fields and fencerows, their pastures It was not easy. The Hamerstroms in­ and woodlots, interspersed with marshes, sisted that a carefully researched and engi­ grassland, and planned food patches. The neered program must be attended by astute commercial bluegrass-seed-producing interaction with policymakers and the pub­ acres of the Buena Vista marsh would be lic—especially in view of the relentless its core. His blueprint, based on specific march of large-scale factory farming. They knowledge of prairie chicken habits, organized the Society of Tympanuchus Cu- would preserve most of the land for agri­ pido Pinnalus (from the bird's impressive cultural use; the managed acreage could Latin name), which, with the Prairie be added as it became needed and avail­ Chicken Foundation, purchased close to able. Thus, instead of a single tract of 12,000 acres in or around the Buena Vista 46,000 acres which would have provided marsh to implement the plan. They also chicken habitat on only five sections, his lived with considerable dignity and stoicism checkerboard reserve markedly increased through several years of stormy debate and the amount of "edge" and spread the chic­ protest—what they called "the prairie ken habitat over seventy-seven sections. chicken wars"—that almost prevented their His plan, accepted by the Wisconsin Con­ innovations. Opponents called their fledg­ servation Department in the early 1950's, ling reserve "Hamerstrom's Kingdom" and was gradually instituted, and its subse­ derided the scatter-pattern reserve as "a so­ quent growth and skillful management— cialist plan." "For the amount of money even when the bluegrass industry was ru­ they speird, they should be wearing gold ined by overseas competition a few years suits!" said one furious critic. At one point later—proved the validity of what is now things got so rancorous, and so personal, termed the "scatter pattern" reserve, a that Hammy drafted a painful letter, offer­ ing to move from their beloved field station if itwould save the project. •'^ Meine, Aldo Eeofiold, 267.

284 CORNELI: THE HAMERSTROMS

.^^

S^ Elva I lamt'rstrom Paulson The Hamerstroms opened their Plainfield home liberally to friends, colleagues, and volunteers. Here, apparently after a hunting excursion in the late 1940's or 1950's, are Fran and Hammy with Cyril Kabat, second from left, and an unidentified guest.

UT it did not come to that. Conserva­ a scatter-pattern of nesting-rearing areas Btionists, professional colleagues, and lo­ without damaging the local economy."-'^ cal friends—their network—rallied round. Conservation commissioner Art Mac- Fran's open-hearted hospitality, her flair for Arthur and wildlife artist Owen Gromme notoriety, now served them well. Early on, wrote letters and spoke publicly on the Harry Walker, the respected postmaster in Hamerstroms' behalf. Les Woerpel mobi­ Plainfield, had pointed out to conservation lized the Wisconsin Federation of Conser­ policymakers that the Hamerstroms' oppo­ vation Clubs, warning that the prairie nents were "a small, vociferous group of chicken was imperiled and that charges malcontents."-''^ As the conflict deepened, against the Hamerstroms were "preposter­ papers all over the state—and indeed na­ ous and false." The columns of Milwaukee tionwide—clarified the issues. Particularly /owrna/outdoor writer Gordon MacQuarrie helpful were news releases featuring the were particularly effective in reaching a "noted man-wife biologist team" which be­ wider audience.''^ Such friends, and such gan to appear after the National Wildlife publicity, enhanced by the Hamerstroms' Federation supported scatter pattern man­ persuasive rhetoric and by wise manage­ agement "in states where farming pressures ment ofthe marsh, eventually prevailed. By had destroyed habitat." As Hammy had ex­ 1956 the "wars" were virtually over, and Wis­ plained at their meeting in December, 1954, consin's prairie chicken was saved. "[I] twill do the job without the necessity of The Hamerstroms' fame and influence buying up the whole area. It will guarantee spread; their focused interest in grouse

•'•' Harry Walker to Ernie Swift, November 28, '•' News and 'Views (Wisconsin Federation of Con­ 1953. servation Clubs), December, 1955; Milwaukeefoumal, •'* Wisconsin State fournal (Madison), January 23, August 16, 1955. Woerpel is now in the national Con­ 1955. servation Hal! of Fame.

285 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, I 999

Elva Hamerstrom Paulson Hammy and Fran, probably in the 1970's, after they had become senior, international figures in wildlife studies.

took them all over the world. Hammy was Aldo Leopold required of the civilized hu­ sought after as an editor and mentor Fran man: "the capacity to live in high density wrote ten books, most of them of a popular without befouling and denuding his envi­ nature that spread ideas basic to conserva­ ronment."^'' The role they played as ethical tion with humor, lively realism, and human models, teachers, friends, and mentors to interest. Hammy provided solid editorial hundreds still alive may be their greatest and managerial support for Fran's writing legacy. Their story is about more than vi­ career Between them they published 168 sion or perseverance, or achievement It is papers and articles and about fifty reviews. about relationships—between husband and They carved out a new research expertise wife, between a pair of biologists and their with their study: the trapping and banding environs, between mentor and students, of raptors, an outgrowth of their early days and between researchers and the re­ on the Necedah and Leola marshes. searched. It is, in all these dimensions, a The pair, always devoted and attentive to love story, and one that deserves to be cel­ one another, remained in love through ebrated. fifty-nine years of marriage, never losing their capacity for growth or their thirst for challenge. In their lives, as in their work, •^*' Aldo Leopold, Game Management (New York, the Hamerstroms met the standard that 1933), 423.

286 Making a Fire Within: The Writing of a Civil War Narrative from Wisconsin

Kerry A. Trask

T7 IRE Within, my book about the Civil when it does it makes almost no splash at J. War experiences of some soldiers and all. But when people stop to talk about Fire civilians of Manitowoc, was published in Within I know then I've hit a part of the 1995. Ever since then, people have been reading public I most eagerly wished to coming up to me at funerals, stopping me reach, and that the book has stirred up in the aisles of grocery stores, and ap­ something within them, perhaps some­ proaching me after presentations I've made thing deep within. to talk with me about it. In the course of our I also find affirmation in their curiosity brief conversations, they will often mention about time. Time, t^f cc^iurse, is some ofthe an ancestor of theirs who was among the most basic stuff historians work with and many men ofWlsconsin who fought in that wonder about. It is also the one ingredient war and is their personal link with that most of life about which we, with our all-in-a- traumatic of national experiences. Then, al­ hurry, present-minded, mass culture, are most invariably, they will ask how long it the most impatient But when I tell people took me to write the book. They never ask that just the writing took me four sum­ me why I wrote it or how I wrote it, perhaps mers—the same as it took the soldiers to assuming such questions to be too intrusive; fight the Civil War—they seem somehow but they are unabashedly curious to know pleased, as if that in itself adds value and va­ how long I labored to bring forth my mod­ lidity to the work. Their body language and est-sized volume. tone of voice imply an admiration for such I always enjoy these encounters, and I an extended effort and the perseverance it appreciate people taking the initiative to demands. They even seem reassured by the make them happen. They are reassuring. thought that some of us are willing to take So much ofwhat academic historians do is on such projects. done practically in secret, for we have a In doing the work, time was certainly a strong tendency to keep among ourselves major concern for me—there never being the hon's share ofwhat we think and write. enough of it and everything always taking As a colleague of mine once observed, writ­ far more of it than I ever imagined itwould. ing an article for a scholarly journal is like Of course, the temporal aspects of the throwing a very small stone into a very deep events I was dealing with were important— well: you have to wait a long time and listen but it was much more a question of place really hard just to hear it hit the water, and that initially set me off in the direction that

Copyright © 1999 by the State Historical Society of Wi.sconsin 287 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. Emily Trask The autlioi s vieiu oj Lake Michigan from Manitoiuoc. eventually led to the writing of the book. It vince before, but I had decided to go to col­ all began some time ago when I started lege in Minnesota, and it felt like high ad­ wondering about where I had ended up. venture crossing the border and heading for the notoriously wicked and windy city of HAD grown up in a small town in central Chicago, then up among the bluffs and IOntario, about a hundred miles north of along the banks of the Mississippi to St Paul Toronto. It was a wonderful place, then on the Great Northern's "Empire Builder." more Victorian than modern, where life But the more home faded into the back­ was lived in easy rhythms in the shade of ground and the longer I stayed away, the the maple trees. We lived on the west shore more disoriented and out of place I felt, un­ of a long beautiful lake, and being on the til, eleven years later and numb from the lake gave us all a clear sense of place and self-doubting ordeals of graduate school, I direction in the world. Also, because my landed in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. To my family had been there since the 1870's and great relief, I was once more living on the my own immediate family lived in the west side of a large lake and could there be­ house my great-grandfather had built with gin to regain a sense of place and direction. pine planks cut in his own sawmill, we knew Living on Lake Michigan, along with hav­ who we were and where we belonged. ing steady work teaching history for the Uni­ Much of that changed in September of versity of Wisconsin-Manitowoc, helped me 1961 when I struck out for the territories— find my bearings, but I still needed to find for the distant Midwest, to be more pre­ out where I really was and who I was be­ cise—and caught an early evening train for coming. A distinguished Canadian literary the States. I'd never been out of the pro­ critic, Northrup Frye, once observed that

288 FRASK: MAKING A FIRE WITHIN

the question "Who am I?" is almost the same as the one "Where is here?" They certainly felt closely related in my own case, and be­ ing a historian, I almost instinctively began looking into the past ofthe place where I'd come to live, hoping to find out more fully what it was and how it had come to be that. To my mind, Wallace Stegner had it right in a brief essay he had written for the Wiscon­ sin Humanities Council when he ob­ served, "The truth is, a place is more than half memory . . . [and] no place is a place until things that have happened iir it are re­ membered in history, ballads, yarns, leg­ ends, or monuments." I needed to go be­ yond the surfaces and appearances, to know Manitowoc as a set of attitudes, collective memories, and shared habits that had taken decades and generations to develop. Years after 1 commenced that search, the accomplished young Ojibwa scholar, Kim­ berly M. Blaeser, who teaches at UW- Milwaukee, pointed out in the Cream City Review that "Native American identity for the most part continues to be forged from different sources than the identity cele­ brated in popular media. And in these The author researching microfilm at the Manitowoc times of identity crisis, they are sources we Public Libi~ary. might do well to reconsider: past, place, community, and story." I was doing all that, but without being conscious of it. Like most Canadians, I was badly af­ Back then I had no intentions of ever flicted with "history envy" when it came to writing a book about Manitowoc—maybe a the American past. Compared with yours, talk or two for some of the local service our history was bland, understated, and ah clubs and perhaps a short article for the most uneventful: a couple of fast-fizzling re­ county historical society. My search was bellions, our victories on Queenston mostly a personal matter and my profes­ Heights and Lundy's Lane during the now sional interests were elsewhere—in the nearly forgotten War of 1812, a long rail­ more distant developments of the colonial road running west, Vimy Ridge in the Great period and among the fur traders, canoe War, the Mounties, and Guy Lombardo. fleets, and Indian camps of an earlier age. The American past, by contrast, had the Rev­ Besides, tenure was the Holy Grail in those olution, ^/i(? Founding Fathers, and /Ae Fron­ early years, and in pursuit of that I mostly tier, not to mention the shores of Tripoli, plugged away at conference papers and the sands of Iwo Jima, Elvis Presley, and the heavily footnoted pieces that I hoped might World Series. We may have been a quieter, become articles. Only after I completed my gentler people, but you had flash and tenure-track work and attended to the drama from the very start. And right in the needs of my students did I prowl around middle of your big, bold, collective experi­ questions involving early Manitowoc. ence, there was the Civil War. Few events in

289 WTSCONSIN MAC;AZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 the history of the whole human race are battles within the community and within the more dramatic, more filled with the stuff of hearts and heads of its people. Much ofthat Shakespearean tragedy, than the American made its way into the newspapers of the Civil War, and that had been true even for a times. There was, for example, the near mor­ small backwater burg like Manitowoc, as I tal combat between the opposing editors of discovered with a growing sense of excite­ the two major newspapers. Irish, Catholic, ment while cranking through microfilm Democratic, whiskey-drinking, brawlingjere- reels of the old local newspapers during one miah Crowley of the Manitowoc Pilot squared of my summers away from teaching. off against his prissy, Protestant, sober, sancti­ monious, Republican rival from New En­ HOSE formative years ofthe community, gland, Sewall Smith ofthe Manitowoc Tribune. Tfrom about 1836 to 1870, were filled with Men of more contrasting views and tempera­ both growth and conflict as the villagers, most ments would be hard to find anywhere. of whom had migrated tc5 the lakeshore from There were also the letters sent home by the a great many far-off other places, struggled to soldiers from distant army camps and battie- find ways of living together They had come fields which were printed in the newspapers in search of better lives, but once here they for the home folks to read and refiect upon. again confronted the harsher side of human They too were often filled with ambivalence existence. For fledgling communities like and resentment: ambivalence about the end­ Manitowoc the larger conflict of secession ing of slavery and the aims of their superiors; and civil war reverberated inward and down­ resentment about their own hard and pain­ ward, setting in motion a series of bitter ful confrontations with death while other men, like themselves, chose self-interest over duty, staying safe at home with dry beds and good food, wives and children. And there are the detailed descriptions ofthe major events that brought the community together and tore it apart. Sudden news of another home­ town soldier's death, the passions stirred in political rallies, the suspense and anxieties of the monthly draft lotteries, and the rumors and reports of far-off victories and discourag­ ing defeats all had their impact. All of it gave me a better sense of the place and provided some rich raw material from which to fashion a couple of interesting talks for the public. My initial presentation dealt with the death in battle of the first Manitowoc sol­ dier and the town's oddly conflicted reac­ tion to it I called it "The First Full Mea­ sure," and it went over quite well with local audiences. More importantly, it pushed me, then unknowingly, still farther down the road towards the writing of Fire Within. One evening, after I had finished my talk and was packing up my papers, a woman came up and told me she had a long diary written by her great- grandmother, who had \Vhi(X3)21101 been an innkeeper in Manitowoc during feremiah Crowley, fiery editor ofthe Manitowoc Pilot.

290 SHSW Librarv Manitowoc's two papers, Z/j

291 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 and I still had grant money that needed jacket. Itwas an old lithograph of Union sol­ spending, so I decided to hang around and diers pressing forward, rank upon rank, over take a look at the Anderson material. fallen bodies, into clouds of smoke, towards I was amazed. There was so much of it. a group of Confederate troops who ap­ His letters and diaries were filled with the peared determined to hold their ground. sights and sounds of the war and with a Then, in a sudden flash of recognition, I no­ young soldier's wonder and concern. By ticed that the flag above the Union ranks the time I departed for home I had a thick was that of the Fifth Wisconsin Volunteers. folder of notes and a personal feeling of That was Anderson's regiment! There they connection with this long-departed Scots were, the hometown boys caught in time immigrant kid who had borne the battle so upon that cover! Immediately I felt a pow­ bravely and written about it so well. erful wish to write their story and bring that But even then I had no plans for any ma­ picture at least part way back to life. jor projects. It was not until I was on sabbat­ ical in 1989, visiting the William L. Clements AFTER that I was much more deliberate Library in Ann Arbor, that the lightning xx. and systematic in my search for addi­ struck. I was on a noontime break from the tional material, much more of which con­ papers of Jeffery Amherst and Thomas tinued to turn up throughout most of the Gage, browsing in a bookstore, when I spot­ duration of the project. Finding it all was ted James McPherson's best-selling Battle Cry quite exciting, but somewhere along the way of Freedom, then recently published. I picked I realized how little I actually knew about the it up and looked at the picture on the dust Civil War in general. Furthermore, I'd had

Manitowoc Public Librarv The two main characters q/Fire \\li\h\n, James S. Anderson and Rosa Kellner.

292 ; I.

The SHSW Archives reading room, which Trask found a quiet place to conduct his research. no personal experience and little under­ studies and firsthand accounts of soldiers standing of soldiering, and certainly none who had lived on the extremes, felt the about the nature of combat. For many mem­ dread and ecstasy of battle, and survived to bers of my generation, for American class­ tell about it. For general background and a mates and friends of mine who went to sense of it all I began with John Keegan's Canada or stretched their deferments as TheFace of Battle, then moved on to Tolstoy's long as they could and then just hoped for personal descriptions of warfare in mid- lucky draws in the draft lotteries, and even nineteenth-century Sebastopol, and then for some who made it back from Vietnam, Frederic Manning's novel of World War I, war of almost any sort seemed stupid and The Middle Parts of Fortune, which Ernest wrong. We had little interest in any of it and Hemingway reread every year because he almost no respect for the martial values and regarded it to be the very best reflection of warrior virtues which, for so long, had been "how things really are" in war I then took a at the very core of our culture's definition of look at the personal side of the American "manhood." But, if I were ever to under­ Civil War by reading the published diary stand James Anderson and his comrades and letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, who had and the community where they had been joined the Second Rhode Island Volunteers members, I had to get beyond that, past the in July of 1861 at age nineteen and whose moralizing and visceral rejection, and make written comments and observations had an honest effort to understand that violent been drawn on quite extensively by Ken "altered state" which has forever terrified Burns for his Civil War television documen­ and fascinated human beings. tary. I also studied the published papers of With that in mind, I talked with people Frank Haskell ofWlsconsin, an eyewitness who had actually experienced combat dur­ to Gettysburg and colonel of the Iron ing the Second World War, or in Korea, or Brigade, who like so many others, had not in Vietnam. I immersed myself in published survived the struggle. Then there were the

293 V\TSC:ONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1999

poems and memoirs of soldiers who had en­ level of battle where the timid as well as the dured the trenches and the mindless brave meet death on equal terms. I also slaughter of World War I: Wilfred Owen's wanted to know how—and, if possible, "Dulce Et Decorum Est" and "Spring Of­ why—they carried on under dreadful con­ fensive," and Rtjbert Graves's Good-bye to All ditions, suffering terrible adversity with little That, for example. I also looked at some food or rest, and almost no notion of the memoirs of those who had fought in World goals or intentions of those at headquarters. War II—works like Farley Mowat's And No And I needed to find out about the Birds Sang (an unusually powerful Canadian thoughts and emotions these experiences memoir of the war in Europe) and William stirred within them. I then read much more Manchester's CroodbyeDarkness (dealing with about soldiers and battle and the Civil War; the U.S. Marines in the Pacific). Eventually, I read Walt WTiitman, Ambrose Bierce, and I came to the writings of some of my own Oliver Wendell Holmes. The more I read, contemporaries, among them Philip Ca- the more I came to see that while the hard­ puto and Tobias Wolff and Lewis B. Puller, ware and the issues had changed from war Jr, who had been to the heart of darkness to war and age to age, the basic nature of in Vietnam and had lived to write about it. soldiering remained pretty much the same. I was mainly interested in the experi­ Then, for the better parts of two summers ences of ordinary soldiers: the waiting and and all the weekends I could grab in be­ marching, the boredom and anxiety, the ex­ tween, my attention was absorbed in the sur­ haustion and pain that had been their com­ prisingly rich sources I managed to find per­ mon lot in the ranks and down at the dirt taining to the Civil War experiences of Manitowoc County. The richest of those were, of course, the papers of James Ander­ son and Rosa Kellner. They became the heart and core of the story. But there was a great deal more. Some early immigrant let­ ters and diaries by individuals like Gustaf Un- onius and Gerhard Kremers were still avail­ able, and most editions of the old English-language newspaper.s—the Pilot, Her­ ald, and Tribune—^were on microfilm in the collection of the Manitowoc Public Library. Because I lived only about a block away I was able to walk over to the library whenever I had a spare hour or two and crank through the reels, squinting into the glaring light at blurry words, copying down complete letters written and sent home by local soldiers. Each offered a look into what Walt WTiitman called the "interior history" of the war. Some of the best of the lot had been sent to the Manitowoc Herald by eighteen-year-old Pale- man Smalley, who served with the Fourth Wisconsin Volunteers and wrote candid and amusingly sarcastic letters under the pseu­ donym "Camp." In addition to what could be V\'hi(X3)50396 found in the newspapers, there was the Frank A. Haskell in his first lieutenant's uniform in wartime journal of Dr Alfred Castieman, sur- 1863. He later became a colonel of the Iron 1

294 Emily trask The Manitowoc Public Lilrrary, where the author did most cfhis research about the community. geon ofthe Fifth Wisconsin, the regiment in which Anderson and a good many other Manitowoc County soldiers served. That was in the special collections at UW- Milwaukee, together with the memoirs of Evan Jones of the .same regiment. There were also the published letters of Mead Holms, Jr., and James Leonard, both from Manitowoc and each more piously senti­ mental than either Smalley or Castieman. There was also the vast collection of soldiers' correspondence gathered by Edwin B. Quiner even while the war still raged. Quiner's compilation was at the State His­ torical Society, and it contained many letters of soldiers from the lakeshore. I was, in fact, somewhat amazed that so many local eyewit­ ness accounts of the Civil War had survived and even more amazed by how many were remarkably well written by young men of so little education. Once 1 was familiar with all that material, I could see the Civil War-era ex­ periences of Manitowoc and its soldiers and civilians in a much larger and more complex context. But before I could go on to place those smaller pieces within that bigger pic­ Whi(X3)1740 ture, I first had to decide on the structure and organization of the project. The summer Dr Alfred L. Castieman, surgeon of the Fifth Wisconsin, the regiment in which many I did that was the most difficult one of all. Manitowoc soldiers served.

295 The First were lying fl;it on tlieir fit-, Ticmty-jirst ^Yisconsin.—Z5 killed, 98 wound­ ed. 54 missing. Lieutenant D. W. Mitchell, ce-swhen wc joinet! thera, and before on Captain Bentley ana Majof Schummaoher, of men could lie down a few were hit and tbe 2l8t, are dead. Col. Sweet, seTerelj wound- eS ; surgeon says he will live. slight!_v wounded. Oiir great st of tliein inessee. sapno.sed that our rep:inient had notr. The 21st, Ist, and 73th, Pennsylvania held , * , . , ' . . vtheir positions, as-also the 24th Illinois, protect- bee.n^uudcr hj-e and were, just gompr to ing my two batteries. Drove the enemy from form a line of ImttU" tiehitld the Kir.^t"'''field, piling up the dead in heaps upon . . ]• heaps. All did well. The fighting of the First and started to join them, .lust at that jg in every one's mouth, all proclaiming it the inoniont the Pir^t sot order.'^ to rise*i^eteran regiment. , „ , ': , , „ Gen. McCook claims that the 28th Brigade uji and fu-e,a.s the rebels were close upon"s„ed the day and turned the tide of battle them. We saw our tni?take. and ral-C against the enemy. Oar loss is fcarfnl, butall ,. , , y. , ' , , T- fell nobly and well. No blenching, no coward- hed our men and fired with the 1< n-st uii-a ice was shown by one of the Wisconsin troops. til one comuanv of the First, next to T'*" 10th and 24th Wisconsin were in the fight. , , '. ' , I , Both Colonels safe. The Ifllh suffered severely, as broke : when the men supposed that,. mThye Brigade 24th los, t th4 eonl 28thy a, si nI akilledm told, wounded. The los, miss in- our whole force was retreating • and[ sing, &o., will number 800 men as near as it went back in good order. No coinpa- can now be ascertained. I am mating up my official reports and will nies in the 21st retreated in such good send you a copy when finished. The battle was oracr rti" .showed as many men as Cos. a terrible one. Tho enemy are defeated, and B and C. Many of our men fired from • we now occupy the position occupied by them, and will undoubtedly move on. Our woundeti ten to twenty rounds of cartridge, and need attention and assistance. Any one com­ three of Co. 15 stayed with the First till ing to Maxwell, Ky., will soon find tie wound­ ed. their amnumifion -wasi gone aud helped We buried-the dead last night on the battle drag the battery off the field, the hor.ses ^eld. The 1st fought some of the same men t-hat they met at Falling Waters. All honor to bciuK 'all shot. Catits. Goilfrey and' { Visoonsin troops! 411 honor to the veteran lat Paine iuid T,ieut. I'ussoil behaved well, r M 21st. Yours, on the field. I t JNO. C. STAEKWBATHEK, i The report we lieard from Oshkosh, that . Cob Ist Wis.. Commandins 28th Rticada^, IO Capt. (xodirey ran away and behaved t, Starkweather's Brigade In the Battle f badly is untrue in every particular. No ol Chaplin's HUl, Oct. 8,1862. ofneer behaved better than he. Osh-^i Ool. STAKK-WEATHKE, Ist "Wisconsin kosh has no shadow of ivasou to feel',!! Volunteers, commanding Brigade, haa f<5j:- ushamed of her two Companies in tlted warded to the Govetnor a copy of his re­ port to Gen, RoTTssBAU, of eoar,se unaware I'wentv-first Wisconsin." of the late singular order from the 'War OUR REGIMMTS W RENTU€Kl! Department, which prohibits the publish­ ing of these records'ol

SHSW ArchiN'es One ofthe newspapers from the multi-volume correspondence that Edwin B. Quiner compiled during the Civil War

296 TRASK: MAKING A FIRE WITHIN

I had to bring order into the chaos of the information I had so randomly gathered. I needed to integrate what I knew and had dis­ covered with what I intuitively sensed and merely theorized. I had to resolve the conflicts and contradictions within it all, not simply by imposing an arbitrary order but by accurately perceiving the dynamic relationships which actually existed among the circumstances and people whose history I wished to write. It was demanding work. I chose to tell my story as just that, a story, where both the main charac­ ters and the supporting personalities, at home and in the war, move in linear time, chrono­ logical order. I wanted the fates of James, Rosa, and all the others to unfold for my read­ ers, allowing them to care about these people who lives were as real as ours today. Sometimes it reminded me ofwhat a tribal shaman experiences when seeking a vision. He must first withdraw from society and se­ clude himself in a lonely and ascetic condi­ tion to meditate about matters that transcend the mundane stuff of routine existence. In time, after going without food or sleep, he will fall into a trance and descend into the un­ Emily trask derworld, where he wrestles with demons and dark forces. Sometimes he will be dismem­ Trask writing in the early hours of the day. bered and recreated in that struggle. But if, with the help of friendly spirits, he is able to about by my own manic mood swings and pre­ prevail against his adversaries in this inner occupied with scraps of paper and bits of in­ journey, he will emerge from the darkness formation, I was in time swallowed up by the with a-vision. The power of that vision will en­ process, to wresde with the demons of my own able him to accomplish great works. doubts and limitations. But slowly the pieces In my own odd, secular humanist way I had began to fall into place and a discernible pat­ something of a similar experience during that tern began to emerge. I still had to hunt down first summer. For a change, I wasn't teaching new material to fill in holes and bridge gaps, summer school, so I withdrew from most of but by early August, when it was time for the the world into the upstairs study where it was annual family vacation, I came out of my quiet and I could look out over Lake Michi­ grumpy seclusion—if not with a full-blown vi­ gan. I was there in the early morning, sitting sion then at least with a well-considered plan. in a straight-backed chair at my old gray metal desk, and I was usually still there long into the T felt good to be organized, but with cool, humid night. While most members of my Ischool resuming I had to put off any ac­ family slept, and during almost all of their wak­ tual writing for quite a while. As it turned ing hours, I was upstairs sipping coffee, brood­ out, I did virtually all the writing during the ing over notes, leafing through papers, and next three summers. I tried during the scribbling on yellow legal pads. Irritable and school year but reaped only a harvest of frus­ unshaven for extended periods of time, jerked trations and a lot of awkward sentences that

297 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999

I eventually threw out. Only the summers with certainty what happens or has hap­ gave me the long, relatively uninterrupted pened in the course of human events. stretches of time in which to get into the In my own work, which touched only a rhythms of the language and cadence of my small part ofthe C^ixil War located on the well- book. (For by then I thought of it as a book.) shaded underbelly ofthe elephant, I used the The shape and form and inner character eyewitness observations of individuals, each of of that work naturally reflected my own as­ whom had seen and experienced the great sumptions and feelings about history. 1 am struggle from a somewhat different vantage not a social scientist and have long consid­ point and perspective. But all of them were ered the discipline of history to be essen­ from the same small community—from Man­ tially a study of perspective—many different itowoc. That proxdded them with a common perspectives on soine ofthe same events, de­ point of reference, and me with a common velopments, and issues by both participants point of focus for my work. Through them I and observers over time. To me, the past it­ was able to describe the community's Civil self seems a lot like the elephant the ten War experience from a variety of views and an­ blind men ofthe old fable were asked to de­ gles. James Anderson and his comrades in scribe. People see (or in their case, feel) Company A of the Fifth Wisconsin Volunteer what they can, or in some cases what they Infantry provided the primary view ofthe war wish or need to see. And because most of us frt:>m the ranks of the Army of the Pott:)mac cannot observe a complex event or devel­ and the smoking fields of conflict in the East. opment in its entirety from all angles, we re­ There were the firsthand view of,sickness and port and remember only the parts of the carnage provided by Dr. Alfred Castieman, beast we happen to bump into. Perceptions, and the observations made by a number of of course, depend on where you stand; and other hometown soldiers who served in a va­ perceptions may change over time as the riety of regiments in different theaters of the arrangement of facts change, memory fails, war. Rosa Kellner, the young Bohemian inn­ and we move to different positions. As a keeper, offered a strong female, homefront consequence, it is always difficult to know perspective froin the main street of Mani-

Tra.sk examining documents at the fmblic library.

298 TRASK: MAKINfi A EIRE WITHIN towoc. There were also the highly charged po­ War, and did so in a manner much truer to litically partisan penspectives of local newsmen life than is ever possible with hard data, pre­ Jeremiah Crowley and Sewall Smith. Each had cise statistics, and studiously impartial reports. something important to say, and everything There were also the elements. There was converged back in Manitowoc. In creating the the water of the big lake which both isolated text I wove all their diverse views and per­ and connected Manitowoc to the bigger spectives together into a kind of tapestry, il­ world, and ofthe rivers that carried the boys lustrating their collective experience in an ar­ to Shiloh and Vicksburg. There was the wa­ ray of shapes and shades and textures. And I ter in their canteens that soothed their dust- began to see elemental connections among parched throats on bone-weary marches, them, in terms of earth and water, air and fire. and the rains and dews that soaked them The stories, rather than the bare facts, through. The earth they had plowed back were the strands of this overall image of war. home now sheltered them from the storin of In their letters and diaries and newspapers battle, and blanketed those whose lives were they wrote (as we all do) so as to not go un­ snuffed out. The air they breathed was thick noticed and unremembered. They tried to with smoke and sulfurous fumes, the screams make sense of, and find meaning in, what of dying men and injured horses, the thun­ might otherwise pass for absurd experience. der and lightning of war. In the North, there The stories they told may have been less (and were the home fires that burned throughout sometimes more) than actual reality, but with­ the long cold winters. There was fire in the out their stories we would know almost noth­ lanterns by the light of which the soldiers ing of them and their participation in this wrote their letters and recorded their days, epic war. Their indi-vidual stories are critical. and in the campfires where they circled to "Average" people's stories allow us to surmise talk and eat and sometimes sing, from Camp what other "average" people were doing, so Randall in Madison, to Prince William Manitowoc's stories attain universality. County in northern Virginia, and the fields Seldom can we know much about anyone around Corinth, Mississippi. There was the except through the stories we hear about fire that flamed from the mouths of muskets them or the stories they tell about themselves. and cannon, and the fires of passion that With James and Rosa and the others, I raged within. Above all there was fire. (re) told their stories in an effort to get as close to the wartime conditions and experiences of ULLING all this together into a coher­ ordinary people as is still possible for us to get. Pent narrative was tough work, made even The accounts they wrote were, of course, far tougher whenever my young son and the from unbiased. They were colored by per­ neighbor kid came in wanting to play games sonal beliefs and subjective opinions and on my computer, or when my even younger written with a self-conscious concern for the daughter needed a ride to a friend's or a les­ impressions they might inake upon their read­ son of some sort. I usually said yes, telling ers. For all the participants, both the men who them I really didn't mind, but that was not marched away and the people who stayed at always the whole truth. My wife Susanne was home, "reality" was not "objectively" out there. working summers, which permitted me to They had nc:) clear-cut, subject-object rela­ escape teaching summer school. That gave tionship to the war. They were the war and the me the time needed for writing, but 1 had war was them, on the streets, on the march, been brought up Protestant in a rather prag­ on the farms, and in the midst of the battle, matic part of the world where people were each merging with and into the other so that compulsively useful. My mother was up and when they wrote about themselves, their had the wash on the line most Monday weariness and their fears, they revealed some­ mornings before any of the neighbors, and thing of the actual inner nature of the Civil my father not only worked overtime on Sat-

299 i

'The Trask family in 1990, the year Trask began to write¥h~e Within. Photo courtesy ofthe author urdays but usually spent his vacation paint­ drafts were done with my Parker fountain ing the house. They did it so people would pen, in blue ink, on white paper. Revisions know they were responsible, ancl to avoid were all in black ballpoint. Only after I had the guilty feelings that were the inescapable worked my way to at least third drafts, WTitten penalty for just taking it easy. Whenever in my own hand, would I permit myself to people asked me about my summer plans, I move on to the more efficient operations of wished I'd be toiling in an iron foundry or a the word processor. Each step took lots of stone quarry rather than having to confess time, but I didn't dare skip a single one, fear­ that I'd be staying home to do some writing. ing that disaster might be the consequence It felt all wrong, having a wife go off to work of cutting corners. Therefore, I was up early every morning while 1 lingered in an up­ and up late and busy in between and, in stairs room drinking coffee and staring into time, the prose did get tighter and cleaner the blue screen of a word processor. What and smoother and gradually more satisfying. made it worse was the fact that I wrote slowly, Nevertheless, even then 1 worried that it almost laboriously at times, and often had might be all in vain, and wondered, in sud­ little to show for all my fussing at the end of den surges of self-doubt, who would ever be a long day. My absorption in that process left interested in publishing a book about a place me feeling somewhat inadequate as a family as obscure as Manitowoc or people as ordi­ man. For fear of making it worse, I didn't nary as James Anderson and Rosa Kellner. I dare ignore the children or show irritation grew word-weary and complained far too with their interruptions and requests. much, feeling that life would have been a lot There were also the idiosyncrasies of my easier, and that I could have enjoyed infi­ own rituals, to which I compulsively adhered. nitely more of the sunshine and good things All first drafts had to be written in longhand, of summer without the project. But I was in pencil, on yellow legal pads. Succeeding stuck, nailed to my OWTI neurotic version of

300 TRASK: MAKING A EIRE WITHIN

the English-Canadian-Protestant work ethic, which provides no absolution for quitters. During three successive summers I wrote as much as I was able, cranking out copies on my old dot-matrix printer when it seemed the whole world was already asleep. Then, when mid-August arrived, I'd stop. That was always difficult, for by then there was a momentum built up, I had the beat, was in the rhythm, and wanted to see it through. Also, by then, I was usually feeling rather sati,sfied about the quality of the writing I was turning out. Un­ fortunately, that was usually deceiving. WTien I returned the following summer to the work I had written nearly ten months earlier, I was shocked to discover how bad it had become over the winter. This was discouraging. Su­ sanne helped me get through the bad places, reading all my drafts with care, offering sug­ gestions, making criticisms, and through it all believing in the project and my ability to do the job. She has a wonderful way with words, and she helped me keep the faith.

During times I was not writing, I took the Kerry Trask, with Parker pen in hand, readies a opportunity to travel to places where the typed manuscript. He wrote first drafts in pen on people whose stories I was telling had been. yellow legal pads. Of all those journeys the most enriching was a trip to an early autumn conference in Win­ downcast gaze in the presence of profound chester, Virginia. The conference had noth­ mysteries and intimations ofthe eternal. ing to do with the Civil War, but I sneaked It was at Fredericksburg, out back of the out early, rented a car, and .spent two full days town near the stone wall at the base of driving the ridges and valleys of Maryland Marye's Heights, where I felt this most in­ and Virginia—first to Harpers Ferry, then tensely. Fredericksburg, halfway between over the Potomac and down to the Antietam Washington and Richmond, was the pivotal battlefield. I spent some emotional hours place in the struggles of the Manitowoc there walking the ground and moving citizen-soldiers about which I was writing. among the monuments near the white­ They had been there in bitter demoralizing washed Dunkard church just beyond the defeat in December of 1862, and had re­ Corn Field in which so many young Ameri­ turned again on a fresh spring Sunday morn­ cans had fought and died that awful Sep­ ing in early May of 186,3 to win. It was both tember day a hundred and thirty years be­ the worst and the best of places for James An­ fore. From there I went through Crampton's derson and his comrades. Behind me, across Gap and on to Frederick, then down to Ar­ the river from the battle site, ran the steep lington, Falls Church, and Manassas, soaking wooded slopes of Stafford Heights like a up impressions along the way. In time I great wall along the north bank of the Rap­ reached the Rappahannock River and pahannock. The heights had been covered crossed over to Fredericksburg. Being on the by a thin layer of snow that distant December battlefields of this region felt a lot like being day when the Union artillery had flashed and in church, as if I should whisper and keep a rumbled along the ridge. Ahead of me was

301 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 the ground where the springtime kitchen thinking about it for as long as possible. Up gardens had been, and the slopes where the until then most of what I'd published had Union men had gone forward, brave and res­ been short academic material such as articles, olute, to fall in neat rows and sprawling essays, and reviews, published in journals with heaps. Beyond that rose the high hill on rather limited circulations. My dissertation which so many had been sacrificed. I climbed had been published as a monograph, but in the hill. There is now a cemetery on top. that case the publisher had come to me. The Standing there, looking out on the battlefield fact was, I still had little notion ofwhat to do and the town, gave me a much clearer per­ with a book-length manuscript that I hoped spective on so much. It was hard to hold back would eventually be printed, marketed, and the tears as I thought of the sorrow and read by a much broader audience than any I courage of those doomed Union boys who had ever reached before. Of course I wanted had crossed the river and gone up that slope Eire Within to be well thought of by scholars, in 1862. There I felt most keenly the sense of but more than that, I wanted it to be read and tragedy that still hangs over the place. After enjoyed by people like my neighbors, my stu­ that, I returned home and finished the book. dents, and the many other members of the reading public whose hunger for history has NCE the nearly four hundred pages of not been particularly well-nourished by pro­ Othe manuscript were as well-written as I fessional historians. Could I find a press that thought myself capable of producing on my was both academic and popular that would own, I had to face the task of finding a pub­ take a chance on a narrative about a small lisher. That was the part ofthe process I knew community and rather ordinary people? least about and it caused me the worst anxi­ How could I go about doing this business ety. Because of that, I had postponed even without looking too dumb and provincial?

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302 TRASK: MAKING A PTRE WITHIN

Would I need an agent? And if so, how would upbeat letter in which 1 misspelled his name. I find one? While ruminating on that I (I had left out one ofthe "b"s, but didn't dis­ thought of an acquaintance of mine who cover it until the next day.) Feeling foolish knew much about such things and could help and doomed, I tried to cover my butt by writ­ me if only I knew where he was. He was Bill ing him a note in which I made fun of the Mulligan, a big barrel-chested Irishman, the many ways my own name had been mutilated son of a New York City cop, who had run the over the years and proinised I would never Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan screw up again. Six days later 1 received a University. He was on an editorial board or postcard on which he had handwritten: two, had published extensively himself, and "Please send the entire mss.—sounds great!" had been the editor of the Michigan Histori­ Like the last scene of Casablanca, where cal Review-when they'd done my piece on the Rick and Louis walk off togethf r into the Great Lakes metis. We had met, talked, and night, this was the beginning of a beautiful had a few beers together a number of times at friendship. My manuscript got fast and con­ the annual Great Lakes History Conference siderate treatment at Kent State—far better in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Bill was a hu­ than any article of mine at any journal. On morous, friendly, and generous guy, but just July 8 of 1993 John sent me an especially fa­ when I was beginning Fire Within, he'd quit vorable reader's report which concluded that his job and vanished. Fire Within was "an excellent study" and pre­ All along there had been something se­ dicted itwould become "an important book," rendipitous about the whole project, and it and indicated he was going to recommend persisted. Just about the time I was putting acceptance to his editorial board, which was the final touches on the manuscript I was sur­ meeting on July 19. Two days after that meet­ prised to receive a letter out of nowhere from ing he wrote me: "I am pleased to inform you none other than Bill Mulligan. (To be pre­ that the Editorial Board has accepted Fire cise, it wasn't exactly nowhere, it was Michi­ Within: A Civil War Narrative From Wisconsin. gan's Upper Peninsula.) Bill was up in Ne- With enthusiasm, 1 might add." In less than a gaunee, trying to make a living as a week their standard publication contract ar­ consultant and raise enough money to turn rived. Legal documents, with their awkward an abandoned iron mine into a museum. He wording and stilted style, always make me un­ wanted a letter of recommendation for ajob. easy and lead me to wonder whether they are I was delighted he had resurfaced, especially actually saying what I think I'm reading. But at such a strategic time for me. I -wrote the re­ this one seemed straightforward enough. It quested letter, of course, but I also asked him proinised me ten percent of the net sales af­ for ad-vice. He was eager to help, and in Jan­ ter the first 400 copies had been sold, and 1 uary of 1993, in between snowstorms, I drove was reassured by people who claimed to know to Ncgaunee with a copy of what I had writ­ that this was a good deal. So I signed on the ten. I was nervous about what he would think. bottom line and sent it back and, as I did, in­ dulged myself in a few harmless fantasies— Bill read the manuscript immediately. He wishful thoughts about fame and fortune and caught some mistakes, sparing me some mi­ rave re-views, and maybe even an appearance nor embarra,ssments later, and returned the with Brian Lamb on C-Span's Booknotes. copy in early February. He said he liked it a (Maybe, if all that happened, my third-grade great deal, was quite encouraging, and sug­ teacher might finally admit that she had been gested I send it to Kent State University Press, wrong about my intellectual abilities.) But whose director was John T. Hubbell, the most of all, I felt a deep sense of relief about king-time and much-respected editor of the having a good publisher firmly on the hoc^k. journal Civil War History. While 1 cleaned up Never before had such an important profes­ my master version, I sent Hubbell a summary sional matter of mine gone so painlessly well. description ofthe manuscript and a bouncy,

303 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999

AFTER that it was a waiting game. I won- xjLdered when they might ask me to write revisions and about how much time I'd get in which to do that work, figuring they'd probably hold off until I was back in school and mired in the most hectic, pressure- filled part ofthe semester. But months went by withotit a word. That summer I drank a few gin and tonics and read some Heming­ way on our front porch, facing the big lake. It was a good summer, and I was much more eager and available than I'd been in some time to take the kids to their friends, pick them up from lessons, and have a few laughs with them along the way. It was fall when Kent State informed me that although Fire Wilhin'was in their produc­ tion "pipeline," no definite decision had been I'he Trask. front porch, whose swing provided Trask made about when it might actually be pub­ an excellent view ofthe lake, and a nice place for a lished. It could be a year or more before that summertime gin and tonic. was determined, and then another year or more before the book might be available in stores. I was disappointed. I pictured my man­ John liked my compliant attitude and uscript stacked away on some dusty store­ approved of how I made the changes he'd room shelf or carelessly stuffed into a drawer recommended. A few weeks after I'd re­ of a metal filing cabinet, out of sight and vir­ turned the revised copy I received one of tually forgotten. I became concerned that, his wry little notes. "1 must say that I'm even with lots of time to think it over, they might more enthusiastic about it," he said, adding change their mind. Consequently, the occa­ that he'd turned over the cleaned-up man­ sional good-natured note or phone call from uscript to "the tender mercies of the edito­ John pro-vided much-wanted assurances. rial staff." I wondered why and what that It was April of 1994 before the next stage would mean and what else might still have ofthe process kicked in. Then, without warn­ to be fixed before we were finished. ing, UPS delivered a box containing the man­ It was Linda Cockovich who had the uscript The timing was just what I'd expected: next crack at Fire Within. Linda was a young, itwas, indeed, the most hectic, pressure-filled smart, fastidiously careful assistant editor part of the semester, but the deadline was with a self-mocking sense of humor. She did mercifully vague. John himself had gone over volunteer work for the Humane Society on the whole thing with a fine-toothed editorial weekends, took in strays off the street from comb, marking up what I had written, slash­ time to time, and had exactly the right dis­ ing unneeded words and sentences, circling position for dealing with me. She knew her errors, pointing out places where additional business well and was almost always in when information would be required, and suggest­ I'd call. Without being either bossy or pa­ ing ways to state some ideas more clearly. I was tronizing, she gave instructions with re­ impressed, as well as relieved. His observations markable clarity. We worked well together. were good ones, sure to produce clearer copy. That summer, while Linda and an anony­ Once school was out and I got down to work, mous copy editor were raking over my work the revisions and rewrites actually proved to another time or two, I got busy finding old be rather modest. photographs and making arrangements for

304 I RASK: MAKING A EIRE WITHIN

maps to be made. The original reader's re­ PENNSYLVANIA Getiysbw port had said they would be necessary, and my editors agreed. The maps gave me an opportunity to work with Paula Robbins, who had been a student of inine at UW- Manitowoc some years before and had define some illustrations for another of my proj­ ects. She had gone off to Madison to study cartography, and when asked to consider making some maps for me she was enthusi­ astic in response. Over the summer she pro­ duced some truly handsome work. Most of the photographs for the book I found in the collections of the Manitowoc Public Library and the State Historical Soci­ ety. There was always an exciting feel of dis­ covery in coming upon the images of people whose letters and diaries I'd read and seeing what they had actually looked like. It gave me a deeper, more sublime sense of knowing them. For some photos, such as those of Rosa Kellner and members of her family, which were still in the possession of Rosa's great- granddaughter, I enlisted the help of Ellen Nibbelink. Ellen had lived in our neighbor­ hood on the south side of Manitowoc and had become a close family friend. She was skilled with a camera and whenever asked she took shots for me and had good prints made. Collaborating with Ellen and Paula was a most enjoyable aspect of the project. ViRGINfA Linda got back to me in late September. She sent a computer disk containing the manuscript, a hard copy, and three pages of detailed instructions printed in very small tcsv of Kent State t'iii\ersil\ type. Admitting that she sometimes made Map from Fire Within //>' Paula Robbins. "mountains out of editorial molehills," she went on to say that there were still plenty of bumps left in the copy. I was stunned. The time to sit in shock. I was given little more number of errors she and the copy editor than three weeks to clean it up and send it had found amazed mc—typos, spelling mis­ back. It was picky work of the most tedious takes, grammatical slip-ups, minor errors of kind, the worst of it being the need to fact, all of which had eluded the notice of change the form of all source notes and bib­ the succession of very careful and perceptive liographic entries to conform to the re­ readers. It was like plowing a field in the quirements of the most recent mutation of Georgian Bay region of Ontario: the more the Chicago Manual cf Style. Linda also times you went over it the more stones you wanted to know what I planned to do about turned up. (Still more errors .surfaced in the making an index and where I wanted the galley proofs months later.) But there was no photographs and maps placed within the

305 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999

The SHSW Visual Materials Archive reading room. The archives possesses approximately two million images. Patrons, like Kerry Trask, begin their search in this room. text. Furthermore, captions for all those had we shared a satisfying sense of pride in what to be written and letters of permission for us­ we had accomplished together ing the photographs procured and returned with the corrected copy. I was warned to be INC]E then. Fire Within has done pretty extremely careful with everything for no al­ Sweh. Even at $30 a crack, the first 400 terations would be possible once the manu­ copies (the number needed to start the roy­ script was typeset. "Cast in stone," I thought, alty meter running) sold fast and I received and plodded on, neglecting almost every­ my first royalty check, for $572.58, just be­ thing else in life, making the deadline with fore Christmas. The initial hardcover print­ two days to spare. ing of 3,000 copies was totally gone by the By the time another summer rolled spring of 1997 and Kent State put out an­ around, my part in the whole process was aF other batch in paperback that summer, sell­ most through. I had pro-vided reams of infor­ ing them at the more reasonable rate of $14 mation to the marketing department, and in a copy. It has now been adopted for a few June had read the galley proofs with great college courses around the country. care. Then, on the issue of the index, I tt^ok During the first six months it was out I un­ the easy way out. After expressing some con­ dertook a promotional mini-tour, reading in cern and pleading inexperience, Linda lo­ bookstores around the state on weekends and cated a freelance indexer in Shorewood, Wis­ signing copies purchased by their customers. consin, and I paid to have it done. I forked out It was great fun and gave me the impression the money without a twinge of regret about that fire Wilhin'was a hot item (medium hot at dodging the tedium and eyestrain ofthat task. least). Therefore, I anticipated the second roy­ That was the last step. In early October of alty check would be a big one. When it failed 1995 the final product, 292 pages long, with to arrive in May, as the contract said it would, a handsome burnt-orange dust jacket, saw I called John, who said itwas in the mail and as­ the light of day. The people at Kent State sured me I'd be very pleased when it arrived. and I had become friends along the way, and That aroused a warm flush of anticipation in

306 TRASK: MAKINC; A PTRE WITHIN me. When I told Susanne, she predicted it was chosen as the topic of UW-Stout's third an­ would amount to something around $5,000. nual history symposium in April of 1997. All That seemed high. No, it seemed to me it of this has been gratifying and reassuring. For would be more like $3,500 (though of course me—the dyslexic small-town kid who floun­ I hoped for more). For more than a week, my dered through grade school and seemed des­ heartbeat picked up whenever I heard the tined for factory work—it is the big payoff. postman on the front porch. When it finally More than that, the people who come up arrived I brought the letter inside without to me at funerals and stop me in the aisles of telling anyone, poured myself a small drink in grocery stores seem to have liked it a lot. preparation for my own private celebration, That's the best part, because I set out to write and then, after fidgeting with the envelope for a book that would appeal to them, a book that a minute or two, I sliced it open and pulled out drew upon the power of stories to demon­ fhe check. It was for $973.93—a nice bit of strate the significance of the lives of ordinary cash, nothing to sniff at, but still.... Since people in ordinary places. But in attempting then the checks have gotten smaller, and the to accomplish that, all the wrestiing and magic total royalties have amounted to a bit less than ofthe process taught me something about dtv $2,500. By my own sober calculations, I believe ing history and about myself—about how ab­ I've earned slightiy more than that by talking sorbing it is and how self-absorbed one be­ to service clubs and adult education classes comes in doing it. It's not news, but it's worth about Wisconsin's Ci-vil War experience. repeating: the work of writing a book is anti­ Ah, well. Even though I missed out on the social and tough on families. It deprives you big money (as do most authors who publish of both time and tolerance for the clutter and with small academic presses), and Booknotes most pleasures of normal life, and frequentiy has not yet invited me to appear. Fire Within it brings on spells of loneliness. All alone, you has produced its own small satisfactions. My come face to face with your own inadequacies. book received some very good re-views. James But in dealing with that, and with the chal­ McPherson, whose dust-jacket illustration had lenges and difficulties of the work itself—in set the project in motion, called it "a remark­ getting down and getting back up and on able book . . . written with verve," which he with it, over and over again—I developed found "hard to put down" until the "fate of greater emotional stamina and better men­ the protagonists" was finally revealed. Steven tal discipline. Also, in working with the lan­ Louis Roca, writing for the Wisconsin Magazine guage for extended periods of time on some of History, said itwas a "thoroughly engrossing ofthe most intimate and trying of terms I be­ story" which "conveys a warmth not only for came more fully aware of its great beauty and the subject matter, but also for the people who power and gradually was more able to use are finally being allowed to tell their story." that power for my own purposes. I also And more recentiy a reviewer for the Civil War gained a healthy respect for the indispens­ News referred to me as "an admirable histo­ able skills of good editors. By seeing the job rian, and a compelling storyteller," whose nar­ through, I finally learned some ofthe lessons rative from Wisconsin "carries all the impact my woodworking father and grandfather had of Fhe Red Badge of Courage, plus the added tried to teach me—lessons about hard work force of historical fact—and passion." Besides and sticking with difficult tasks and the pa­ such positive endorsements there have also tient, painstaking attention to detail required been some nice awards: from the State His­ of good craftsmanship. All of that, in turn, torical Society of Wisconsin and the Wiscon­ has made me a better teacher, with greater sin Library Association, as well as from the empathy for the personal side of history and Council for Wisconsin Writers, which gave Fire more desire to reach people in ways that ex­ Within its Leslie Cross Nonfiction Award in pand their appreciation for the importance 1996. I felt much honored when Fire Within and infinite richness of the past

307 Review Essay

Wisconsin, the Sesquicentennial, and Videotape

By Robert J. Cough

This review essay focuses on Wisconsin Stories, a five-part video documentary produced by Wisconsin Public Television and the State Historical Society ofWlsconsin, 1998, presented in five videocassettes with a total running time of 300 minutes, (no ISBN), $29.95 each or the set for $119.95 [educational discount available]; and Stand the Stcrrm, a video documentary produced by Wisconsin Public Television and the Wisconsin Supreme Court, 1998, presented in one videocassette with a total running time of 29.5 minutes, (no ISBN), $9.95.

HE celebration of Wisconsin's sesqui­ next. The stearics presented in each pro­ Tcentennial highlighted many of the gram explain thematically how the varied things that make the state special. One of peoplcwho make-up Wisconsin's population these is the tradition of public agencies' changed themselves (and their land) over providing educational and cultural pro­ time to create the place that u^day is Wis­ grams for a wide range of state residents. consin. Several excellent video documentaries on "This Place We Call Wisconsin" is the Wisconsin history, shown on Wisconsin first program. Its initial segments describe Public Television and now available in VCR aspects of the natural history of the state, format for home and school use, continued including glaciation and prehistoric flora this tradition in 1998. and fauna. American Indian life then ap­ Wisconsin Public Television and the pears in segments that show both modern State Historical Society of Wisconsin have archeologists at work and Indian elders de­ produced a fi\'e-part series, Wisconsin Stories. scribing their people's traditions. The pro­ While not claiming to be comprehensive, gram's concluding segments focus on the these programs explore a wide range of effects of contact between white settlers topics about the state's history. Each pro­ and American Indian.s—the development gram has a cross-temporal focus, but the of metis cultures and finally the conflicts first four programs develop in roughly that culminated in the Black Hawk War. chronological sequence, from one to the The program's introduction and epilogue

308 Copyright © 1999 l)^ the State Histo 1 Societ\ <)r\\ise( .\n rishls ol reprodiK REVIEW ESSAY: WTSCONSIN AND VIDEOTAPE

bridge-Munsee Indians to Wisconsin in the early nineteenth century; the immigration from Germany of the Forty-eighters after their failed revolution; the development in Milwaukee of a vibrant Polish-American community centered on St. Josephat Basil­ ica; the migration in the early twentieth century of rural southern blacks to Beloit and elsewhere; and the flight to Wisconsin of Hmong people in the aftermath of the end of the war in Southeast Asia in the 1970's. The third of Wisconsin Stories is "Labora­ tory of Democracy," an examination ofthe political history ofthe state, especially from the 1880's to the 1940's. A brief segment re­ lates the controversy over the 1854 capture of runaway slave Joshua Glover and its role in the establishment of the Republican WISCONSIN STORIES party. The central segments ofthe program describe the Progressive insurgency within A SERIES OF FIVE ORiGINALTELEVISION PROGflAMS and, finally, in opposition to the Republi­ IN CELEBRATION OFTHE STATE'S can party. They focus on Robert M. La Fol­ lette, Sr., and the accomplishments of the THIS PLACE WE C^ • • 1911 legislative session. Woven into these FINDING A HOME segments is the role of Victor Berger and LABORATORY OF DEMV_ democratic socialism in Milwaukee. Later BUILDING A STATE segments relate themes ofWlsconsin Pro­ TIME TO PLAY gressivism to other public events. They de­ scribe the campaign for women's suffrage (previously identified briefly as an issue at the 1848 state constitutional convention) One of the fixje box covers of Wisconsin Stories. and the contribution to national politics in the 1930's of United States Senator Robert discuss the "Point of Beginning" in Grant M. La Follette, Jr. Finally, a brief coda iden­ County, where surveyors introduced the tifies the significance of state politics be­ United States land survey system into Wis- tween 1946 and 1958. It argues that the cc5nsin. These segments provide thematic development of a two-party Democratic-Re­ unity for the program. Their point is that publican system in Wisconsin brought the through the land survey white settlers state to resemble the rest ofthe nation. gained control of the landscape and The fourth part of the series is "Building changed the existing ways of Indian life. a State." This program approaches the The second program, "Finding a Home," economic history ofWlsconsin by focusing is "a celebration of who Wisconsin is." It is on the men and women who worked in about the peopling of Wisconsin in the different aspects ofthe state's system of pro­ nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and duction. Lead miners in southeastern how the legacy of these people affects the Wisconsin and mid-nineteenth-century "pi­ state at the end of millennium. Segments oneer farmers" are the subjects of this pro­ relate the story of the relocation of Stock- gram's first segments. A subsequent seg-

309 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 ment explains why farmers shifted from consin Stories. Mik Derks created the series growing wheat to dairying. Then from the and produced and edited "This Place We grievances of workers in the industrializing Call Wisconsin." David Hestad produced economy of the late nineteenth century the series and "Laboratory of Democracy" emerges a segment about the general strike and "Building a State." Carol Larson was ex­ in Milwaukee in 1886. Next, the colorful ecutive producer of the series and pro­ but dangerous experiences of lumberjacks duced "Finding a Home." Daniel Banda are juxtaposed to the initially optimistic but produced and narrated "Time to Play." ultimately disappointing experiences ofthe This creative team effectively uses all the farmers who followed them into the Cu­ methods that in recent years have become tover of northern Wisconsin. A segment on familiar to viewers of historical documen­ the I920's describes the ways in which Wis­ taries. Experts give brief, on-camera in­ consin residents participated in this "new terviews. Narrators read from historical era" as consumers. Rather than portraying documents. Hundreds of well-chosen the hardships of workers or labor strife dur­ photographs present historical images. ing the Great Depression, the next segment Clips from contemporary film are part of emphasizes the accomplishments of the "Laboratory of Democracy" and "Building young men of the Civilian Conservation a State." Voice actors read the words of lum­ Corps. This approach continues the series' berjacks in "Building a State" and appear in theme ofthe significance ofthe interaction other segments in the series. Excellent between people and the natural environ­ maps regularly locate for the viewer where ment and the program's focus on succes­ historical events occurred. Thomas A. sive uses ofthe land in northern Wisconsin. Nauhas' music unobtrusively complements The final segment brings together many of the stories. the program's threads by highlighting how Through use of these techniques, the workers in the various components of Wis­ creators of Wisconsin Stcnies show how Wis­ consin's economy directly contributed to consin residents in 1998 reflect their his­ the successful national economic mobiliza­ tories in many aspects of their lives while tion of World War 11. simultaneously and continuously discover­ The subject ofthe final program of Wis­ ing and redefining their histories. In the consin Stories, "Time to Play," is recreation words of narrator William Cronon at the and entertainment. Segments fondly look conclusion of "This Place We Call Wiscon­ at the traditional Indian game of lacrosse; a sin," "We who live in this place are both the church supper at a Norwegian Lutheran object and the instigators of change—in­ church; youth sports at the North Central dividual threads in the fabric of history YMCA in Milwaukee; the tavern culture as­ that we are now weaving day-by-day for sociated with lake recreation; the annual those who will follow, just as the fabric of American Birkebeiner ski race at Ha)'ward; today was woven by those who came be­ the Wisconsin State Fair; dolls manufac­ fore." Viewers see Wisconsinites uncover­ tured by a W''orks Progress Administration ing their past at archeological digs; restor­ project; Packermania; and the Great Circus ing historical buildings, such as Turner Parade. These may seem to be disparate Hall in Milwaukee; participating in the ac­ topics, but the program brings t^ut how par­ tivities of local histoiTcal societies; examin­ ticipants in them have contributed tcj the ing pictographs in rock formations; learn­ development of an "American Identity." ing their native language and culture from tribal elders; rescuing historic circus wag­ OLID scholarship, a cogent story line, ons from oblivion; studying photo albums Sand high quality in all features of pro­ at family reunions; and outlining their his­ duction characterize each program of Wis­ tory on Hmong storyclothes, among many

310 REVIEW ESSAY: WTSCONSIN AND VIDEOTAPE

other activities. Correspondingly, the viewer sees how this actively maintained history has influenced Wisconsinites in 1998. In "Finding a Home," young gym­ nasts compete at the restored Turner Hall, continuing German immigrant principles of "sound body, sound mind" in a society increasingly appreciative of the impor­ tance of physical fitness and athletic op­ portunities for women. In "Time to Play," Wisconsin residents self-consciously eat ethnic foods, drink beer, and ski cross­ country in imitation of their European an­ cestors. Throughout the series, views of pastoral countrysides, landmark buildings, and even legacies of disappointments— like the ruins of a Cutover farm—portray how Wisconsin today has been shaped by earlier people. Wisconsin Stories tries to show how these histories have remained distinct while fitting together, in Cronon's words, to create "this place that is Wiscon­ sin." For example, in "Finding a Home" the Stockbridge-Munsee tribal council works through the formal European- derived framework of a democratic local government to maintain the cultural and Karl Hallsten (left) plays abolitionist Sherman Booth territorial integrity of its people. The most and Tim Dorsey is runaway slave foshua Glover in memorable point in the series, for me, is Stand the Storm, the docudrama available from Wisconsin Public Television. the segment in "Finding a Home" that con­ cludes with a heavily Hispanic congrega­ tion participating in a Catholic mass at the as historian John Gurda gives on-site nar­ magnificently restored St. Josephat Basil­ ration. He describes the 1886 general ica, where the celebrant is an Irish-Ameri­ strike, while the camera pans across an can priest. overgrown lot dotted with a few abandoned Wisconsin Stories cannot be a complete factory buildings and bisected by a multi- history of the state. It makes little mention, lane expressway. for instance, of Wisconsin's participation in the Civil War. The decades after 1945, in O TAND the Storm, a video production of particular, receive limited attention, except O Wisconsin Public Television and the in "Time to Play." There is only fleeting Wisconsin Supreme Court, examines in mention in "Laboratory of Democracy" of more detail one incident that Wisconsin Sto­ United States Senator Joseph McCarthy. ries can mention only briefly. In 1854, abo­ Viewers of "Building a State" do not see litionist editor Sherman Booth engineered how the post-industrial work experiences of the jailbreak in Milwaukee of Joshua Wisconsin residents changed with the de­ Glover, a recaptured runaway slave. When cline of manufacturing and rise of agri-busi­ federal authorities prosecuted Booth for ness. They must be satisfied by only a silent obstructing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, suggestion, in "Laboratory of Democracy," the Wisconsin courts rejected the constitu-

311 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HIS'EORY SUMMER, 1999 tionality of the proceedings and twice re­ ateness of the use of federal habeas corpus leased him on habeas corpus writs. In a proceedings to challenge the constitution­ unanimous decision written by Chief Jus­ ality of criminal convictions in state courts, tice Roger B. Taney, the United States Sup­ especially in death penalty cases. More gen­ reme Court in 1859 resolved this jurisdic­ erally, it makes students think about the cir­ tional tug of war. This decision, in Ableman cumstances in which moral outrage can jus­ V. Booth, sharply rebuked the position ofthe tify civil disobedience. To clarify this Wisconsin Supreme Court It specifically question, teachers should go beyond the precluded state officials from releasing fed­ contents of Stand the Storm, and get sec­ eral prisoners through habeas corpus pro­ ondary and college level students to distin­ cedures, and more generally upheld fed­ guish between Wisconsin's actions in chal­ eral supremacy while protecting the lenging federal authority in the 1850's and institution of slavery. Stand the Storm Alabama's in the 1950's. How were the ar­ thoughtfully identifies the irony in how pre- guments of slave-owning Southerners, and Civil War Wisconsin residents, like Booth, their advocates on the Supreme Court, in­ tried to protect runaway slaves by invoking consistent in minimizing federal authority the doctrine of states' rights, the same prin­ in almost all matters except recapture of ciple used by opponents of desegregation fugitive slaves? How was the sectional parti­ in the 1950's and 1960's. It also makes clear sanship of Robert B. Taney shown by the how a willingness to use direct action and contradiction between his opinions in Able- civil disobedience was common to antislav­ man, restricting the use of habeas corpus, ery protesters in the 1850's and civil rights and in ex parte Merryman (17 U.S. 144, advocates a century later. More so than Wis­ Taney sitting on circuit), attacking Presi­ consin Stories, Stand the Storm links state and dent Abraham Lincoln for suspending the national history. writ in wartime Maryland? Teachers can profitably use both docu­ mentaries in their classrooms. Stand the HE creators of Wisconsin Stories explicitly Storm is especially appropriate for upper el­ Tprepare teachers to use it in their class­ ementary, middle, and secondary school rooms. They have built an excellent educa­ classes in United States history and gov­ tional web site, www.shsw.wisc.edu/Wisconsin- ernment, as well as Wisconsin history. It en­ Stories, appropriate for secondary social gages the attention of viewers at these age studies and many middle-level teachers. This levels with well presented dramatic re-en­ site provides a study guide, selected original actments and readings. It helps make con­ sources, and a bibliography for each pro­ crete for history students many important gram in the series. Each original source has national issues ofthe 1850's, including the background information and a list of sug­ Fugitive Slave Act, the Underground Rail­ gested student activities. For example, a doc­ road, abolitionism, and the role of the ument linked with "Finding a Home" is a fas­ United States Supreme Court in exacerbat­ cinating 1854 letter home by three recent ing the sectional controversy. (Teachers immigrants to Dane County from Norway, should use Stand the Storm carefully, how­ editecl for readers at the secondary school ever, since student viewers could incorrectly level. A discussion question asks students to conclude that everyone in Wisconsin in the use the document by calculating how long an 1850's was antislavery, or even abolitionist.) immigrant laborer would have to work to In government classes. Stand the Storm can save the money the letter indicates is re­ prompt discussion about civil liberties, quired to purchase the land, supplies, and federalism, and judicial procedure. For ex­ livestock needed to become a farmer in mid- ample, it could provide an entree into a nineteenth-century Wisconsin. As this ex­ current events discussion of the appropri­ ample brings out, teachers can use most of

312 REVIEW ESSAY: WLSfXlNSlN AND VIDEOTAPE the documents independently of showing ondarydevel students to appraise the stated Wisconsin Stories. There are also many ways to conclusion of "Laboratory of Democracy" use Wisconsin Stories in addition to those sug­ that Victor Berger's experiences during gested in the educational web site. The fact World War I highlight a tradition of "toler­ that each program in the series consists of ance" in Wisconsin. relatively self-contained segments is useful to Watch Wisconsin Stories and Stand the teachers. They might productively include a S/orwi when Wisconsin Public Television re­ ten-minute portion of a program as part of a peats them. Show them to your students. prepared lesson or series of lessons. The Organize discussion groups about them at segment on lumbering in "Building a State," your local library or historical society. Play for instance, effectively can introduce a them in your mini-van on the family vaca­ multi-disciplinary middle-level unit. Using tion trip this summer. Use their on-line and this segment as background, teachers can printed bibliographies and read more then use individual lessons to explore in de­ about the history of the state. Encourage tail topics such as the economic significance Wisconsin Public Television and the State for the state of the lumber business, the folk­ Historical Society to continue to produce lore of lumberjacks, and the environmental historical documentaries, and to include in consequences of rapid deforestation. Class­ them the history of recent decades, as this room use of other segments in the series can time period comes into perspective. Re­ enhance critical thinking skills. Teachers member that the peoples ofWlsconsin will might ask students to identify and evaluate continue to make their histories, and com­ the implicit arguments of the series' cre­ municate them in innovative ways, for at ators. For example, they can challenge sec- least another 150 years.

The early years of television in the classroom.

313 BOOK REVIEWS

THE GREAT SILENT ARMY OF leaders, expressed both privately and in pub­ ABOLITIONISM: ORDINARY WOMEN lic attacks. She focuses principally on dfs- IN THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT. senters and "come-outers," who founded new Byfulie Roy feffrey. sects such as the Wesleyan Methodists. Since, (University of North (Carolina Press, Chapel as she acknowledges, most abolitionist women liill, 1998. Pp. xii, 311. Illustrations, notes, bib- remained in traditional denominations, such hography, index. ISBN 0-8078-4741-0, $18.95.) dissenting women's experiences would seem to deserve more extended treatment. The ev­ This volume documents the activities of idence here is fascinating, however, especially abolitionist women in the United States from when it traces women's migrations from William Lloyd Garrison's rise in the early church to church, seeking congregations will­ 1830's until the Civil War. Telling her story ing to denounce slavery as a sin. chronologically, Jeffrey traces how the Briefer passages of the book focus on North's changing political climate influenced women's roles in antislavery politics, black women's tactics. She documents a shift fnjm women's work for \igilance committees, and early petitions and private persuasion to anti- the oratorical strategies of lecturers like Sallie slavery fairs, boycotts, aid to fugitive slaves, HoUey, who relied on sermons as a model for and, by the 1850's, frequent lecture tours by womanly public speech. Rather than focusing the boldest women enlisted in the cause. Us­ on those who later joined the women's rights ing diaries, letters, and memoirs, Jeffrey suc­ movement, Jeffrey takes such abolitionist work cessfully WTites history from the bottom up, on its own terms. She rightly stresses its radi­ conveying abolitionist women's point of-view. calism and, by recording women's own voices, In a chapter on the 1840's, when aboli­ shows the price they paid in deprivation, so­ tionists were divided and dispirited, Jeffrey cial ostracism, exhaustion, and self-doubt shows how dedicated women sustained the Jeffrey identifies a tension betiveen the movement by organizing antislavery fairs to goals of abolitionism and aid to fugitive slaves. raise funds and public awareness. Her analy­ Her evidence suggests that, for many women, sis of these fairs' material culture is especially material aid to fugitives was the more com­ interesting. Organizers' goal of "profitability" pelling task, and that the injured bodies and and their complex marketing networks illu­ haunting stories of escaped slaves proved far minate the ways Northern women were mov­ more persuasive to white Northerners than ing into the market economy while seeking, did editorials and addresses. Even free-born in this case, moral rather than financial gain. African-American women like Frances Watkins Jeffrey also breaks ground with her treat­ Harper found that their most effective tactic, ment of the churches. She documents wom­ in speaking to whites, was to represent "the en's disapproval of non-abolitionist church voice ofthe slave." On this point, and on race

314 BOOK REVIEWS

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315 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999 mostly "Atlantic Creoles," products ofthe At­ derstanding how the varying nature of slav­ lantic commercial realm, who understood ery and freedom in early America affected aspects of European culture and for half a concepts of race and race relations for that century were able to carve out an existence time and for ours. in a racially-blurred society that afforded some freedom and modest prosperity. Char­ DONALD R. WRiciHT ter generations had different experiences SUNY-Cortland elsewhere; plantation generations experi­ enced slavery differently, mostly according THE WISCONSIN FRONTIER (A HISTORY OF to regional variations in production; and rev­ THE TRANS-APPALACHIAN FRONTIER SERIES). olutionary generations gained freedom in By Mark Wyman. the North yet faced an expanding slave so­ (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1998. ciety in the South. Race was a factor in slav­ Pp. vii, ,^,^6. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliog­ ery's creation and justification, and as raphy, essay on sources, index. ISBN 0-253- Americans redefined slavery, they altered 33414-4, $29.95.) their notion of race, ultimately, Berlin wxites, "confining people of African descent to a Writing about the Wisconsin frontier place of permanent inferiority." poses a particular challenge to historians be­ Throughout the book, careful organiza­ cause the topic has been addressed so well by tion and clarity of expression mask the com­ a long line of distinguished scholars. Freder­ plexity of Berlin's arguments. Chapters and ickjackson Turner ofthe University ofWls­ sections fit together to make larger points consin brought the field of frontier history and one knows what is coming from intro­ to the fore with his classic address at the ductions, the beginnings of chapters, even World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, "The topic sentences of paragraphs. (Books are Significance ofthe Frontier in American His­ supposed tcj work this way, of course, but so tory," which drew inspiration from his boy­ often they do not.) Graduate students need­ hood in nineteenth-century Portage, Wis­ ing to know the book's basic arguments can consin. Two generations later, Alice E. Smith, "do" it in a couple of hours, while they also the director of research at the State Histori­ can spend weeks mining it for solitary gems, cal Societ)' ofWlsconsin, authored the first confident that Berlin's conclusions test on volume of the History of Wisconsin series, extensive study. (One hundred six pages of which remains the definitive work on the detailed notes to myriad archives, manu­ early history ofthe state. And today, numer­ script collections, and published sources ous other scholars have helped extend and support virtually every substantial statement refine our historical understanding of the in the text.) Wisconsin frontier Thus, as no one before him, Berlin shows Now joining these notable works is Mark how and why "[i]n mainland North America, Wyman's The Wisconsin Frontier, a clearly writ­ slaves (like their owners) were simply not the ten, lively, and entertaining history that de­ same people in 1819 that they had been in tails the interaction of peoples and cultures 1719 or 1619." His doing so enables us to from prehistory through the end of the nine­ stop reducing African Americans through teenth century. Written as the third volume the slavery years to "stock figures of the schoF of an ambitious series edited by Walter Nu­ arly imagination" and to recognize them as gent and Malcolm Rohrbough that docu­ persons with resources, however meager, to ments the history of the trans-Appalachian fashion their lives as best they could under frontier, the book attempts to synthesize a the difficult circumstances surrounding slav­ large quantity of existing secondary literature ery and freedom in their place and time. Al­ and present it in a format accessible to a gen­ most as a bonus, he gives us a basis for un­ eral audience. In this endeavor, the work suc-

316 BOOK REVIEWS ceeds admirably. Wyman has brought to­ In Remembering the Holocau.st, the fourth gether several decades of scholarship in an volume in the Voices of the Wisconsin Past se­ engaging history connected by a dri\ang, in­ ries, fourteen residents ofWlsconsin who sur­ formative narrative. The book is particularly vived those dark years in Europe from 1939 strong in its focus on Native Americans, in­ to 1945 tell the stories of their experiences at cluding excellent discussions of intra-Indian the hands and whims of the Nazis—years of relations as well as the native inhabitants' in­ torture, fear, starvation, humiliation, and im­ teractions with Europeans and Americans. prisonment for most, and years of hiding or Chapter nine, entitied "Restricting the Indian running or living -with false identification for Domain," pro-vides a particularly useful sur­ others. vey of Indian removal and the creation of In­ The book, a slim, compelling, and often dian reservations in nineteenth-century Wis­ gripping set of recollections, is divided by consin. countries—^Austria and Germany; the Neth­ A minor criticism of the work concerns its erlands; Italy; Lithuania, Poland, and the explanation of Wisconsin's transition from a Ukraine; and finally Greece and Hungary, frontier region to a post-frontier community. where the Nazi invasion came late, but with Topical chapters on subjects such as immi­ no less dire consequences for the thousands gration, the introduction of American farm­ of Hungarian Jews murdered in Auschwitz, ing methods, and the logging frontier sug­ Mauthausen, or in forced labor camps. gest how this proce,ss occurred, but a book The book opens in Berlin, on the evening specifically on the frontier warrants a more of November 9 and 10, 1939, where the story explicit analysis of this process. A more de­ of the Holocaust often begins: in Germany liberate treatment of the transition to a post- on Kristallnacht, the government-sanctioned frontier society and its implications would pogrom and systematic desecration of syna­ have helped underscore the usefulness of the gogues, Jewish businesses, and Jewish homes. frontier as a category of analysis while also The second section is narrated by a German providing readers with a clearer understand­ woman who survived the war hiding in ing of the frontier's importance as a con­ Berlin, and the third by an Austrian whose tested political and cultural space. family fled the Nazis to spend the war in The Wisconsin Frontier will be a welcomed Japanese-occupied China. arrival for those wishing for a concise in­ These opening oral histories set the tone troduction to the Wisconsin frontier expe­ for the rest of the volume by informing the rience and a history of the people who in­ reader that although all of those inter-viewed habited and explored the western Great were victims ofthe same reign of terror, each Lakes region. For students, history lovers, person or family who survived the Holocaust and scholars alike, it will provide a compact did so under many different circumstances. and highly readable entry point to the large While some Jews could not have lived body of modern research on the Wisconsin through the war without the bravery and frontier experience. rectitude of a few heroic Christians, other survivors had to rely on their own wits and STEVEN B. BURC; determination. While each survivor's narra­ University of Wisconsin-Madison tive differs in its detail and locale, the meth­ ods used by the Nazis and their collaborators REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST to humiliate, degrade, and terrify their vic­ (VOICES OE THE WISCONSIN PAST SERIES). tims did not differ much at all. Also com­ Edited by Michael E. Stevens. mon to each story of survival is the con­ (State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, fluence of several important elements: 1997. Pp. iii, 172. Index, notes, illustrations. presence of mind, determination, and sheer ISBN 0-87020-293-6, $12.95.) luck. This is confirmed by the recollections

317 Wti(X3) 39320 The Rothstein family in Skatat, Poland, 1925. Pictured are (left to right) Wolf, foe, ^eige (grandmother), Lucy , Milo, and Gusta. Lucy immigrated to Sheboygan after the war Her parents. Wolf and Gustov, were killed by the Nazis. Milo died while serving in the Russian army. in this volume by the Jews who had been BIRDS OF WISCONSIN. rounded up in virulently anti-Semitic Uk­ By Owenf. Gromme. raine, in contrast to those who resided in the (Revised edition, tvith an introduction by Samuel Netherlands, where Jews had enjoyed ac­ D. Robbins, Jr. University ofWlsconsin Press in ceptance, prosperity, and respect. cooperation with the Milwaukee Public Museum, These narratives serve an important pur­ 1998. Pp. xii, 228. Color illustrations, maps, ap­ pose and add to the rich texture of the im­ pendix, index. ISBN 0-299-15860-8, $75.00.) migrant experience in Wisconsin as well as in America as a whole. Although some his­ I was a fan of Owen Gromme's work long torians have argued that the Holocaust can before I ever heard his name or knew that only be understood through the documents he was a bird guy. When I was growing up, left behind by the Nazis and their indicted the supreme highlight of every visit to my and unindicted coconspirators, it is through grandparents' home was a trip to the old the memoirs of the victims and survivors Milwaukee Public Museum, where Gromme like those recorded in Remembering the Holo­ served as collector, taxidermist, artist, and caust that the world can learn the conse­ curator from 1922 until his retirement in quences of unchecked demagoguery, blind 1965. The museum's wonderful habitat obedience to authority, and, yes, the in­ groups, the waterfowl in flight, the countless domitable and unquenchable spirit of those mounted birds in their tidy ranks—all were who seek to reclaim and reaffirm life. the work of Gromme and his staff. They made an indelible impression on JEAN M.PECK me. By the time I was ten I was peering up at University of Houston spiraling hawks through my mother's opera

318 BOOK REVIEWS glasses, making poor copies of Louis Agassiz was a mo-ving experience; an extraordinary Fuertes' bird portraits (a Peregrine falcon affirmation of life and vitality." tearing at a fresh-killed songbird was a fa­ Now the University ofWlsconsin Press has vorite of mine), and attempting, with a cheap totally re-vised and republished Birds of Wis­ box Brownie, to photograph birds at our consin. It is a distinct pleasure to report that backyard feeder. A bit later, when I began this new edition is better than the original— hunting with my dad, I brought home my so much better, in fact, that there is hardly own specimens to sketch in pencil, crayon, any comparison between the two. The Press and watercolor—mostly ducks, pheasants, redesigned the jacket and binding, updated and quail, though once, to my eternal and reset the type, revised many of the range shame, a Great Horned Owl. From there, it maps, prepared a new index, cleaned up the was but one short step to the hard stuff: a Pe­ outline map ofWlsconsin, and provided a terson guide, a pair of binoculars, and a list. very useful list of the eighty-one confirmed I first encountered Gromme the artist Wisconsin species not depicted by Gromme. when my parents acquired a copy of his Birds Many of these improvements are the work of ofWlsconsin, a large-format volume published designer Earl J. Madden and of Samuel D. in 1963 by the University ofWlsconsin Press Robbins,Jr., dean ofWlsconsin ornitholo­ (and reprinted in 1974). It contained eighty- gists, whose pithy introduction sets the table nine watercolor portraits depicting Wiscon­ for Gromme's paintings. sin's 328 recorded species, each attended by Naturally the color plates are the main a range map showing the bird's migration course, and they are strikingly beautiful. and nesting patterns. The bird groupings Joanne Peterson ofthe Milwaukee Public Mu­ were a tad stylized, as scientific portraits tend seum rephotographed all eighty-nine species to be; but supplementing the formal plates paintings, ensuring that every plate is bril­ were sixteen terrific habitat paintings, mostly liantly clean and true to Gromme's water- in oil, showing birds in the wild: Canvasbacks color originals. There are also eighteen oils swirling out ofthe mist on Lake Winnebago, of birds in action and habitat, all new to this crows mobbing an owl, and so forth. edition. WTiat is more, the pagination has These "action and habitat" paintings been adjusted so that every color plate falls marked a new chapter in Gromme's career. on a right-hand page. At seventy-five dollars, Following his retirement from the Milwaukee this new and improved Birds ofWlsconsin may Public Museum, the Marshall and Ilsley Bank seem a bit pricey, but in truth it is a bargain. generously commissioned him to paint what­ ever he liked. The resultant bird paintings— PAUL HASS many ofwhich were published by Stanton & State Historical Society of Wisconsin Lee in 1983 as The World of Owen Gromme— were nothing less than electrifying. Clearly, Book Review Index Gromme was far more than an acute scientist Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: TheFirst Two and portrayer of bird plumage and attitude; Centuries of Slavery in North America, revie-wed he was someone who had been out in the by Donald R. Wright 315 rain and snow, crouching in a duck blind and Gromme, Birds of Wisconsin, reviewed by tramping the ridges, a master painter of birds Paul Hass 318 in full flight, attuned to every nuance of sky, Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement, weather, foliage, and en-vironment As Roger reviewed by Rebecca Edwards 314 Tory Peterson observed in 1970, "I stood be­ Stevens, Remembering the Holocaust (Voices of fore each canvas ... dumbfounded. Here was the Wisconsin Past series), reviewed byjean M. an artist, twelve years older than I, doing his Peck 317 very best work at a time when so many other Wyman, The Wisconsin Frontier {A History ofthe Trans-Applalachian F'rontier series), reviewed painters were putting their brushes aside. It by Steven B. Burg 316

319 From the State Archives which tell of contacts with French people and conditions at the front. Catalog descriptions of eighty-six per A compilation of Samuel G. A. Rogers' diary, cent of all manuscript and government letters, and poems, 1917-1919, prepared by records holdings are available in the his daughter, detailing his experiences while Archives' on-line catalog (ArCat). Ar­ a volunteer ambulance driver in France. Cat is part ofthe University ofWlscon­ A record book, 1863-1867, containing sin Electronic Library and is acces,sible minutes of meetings of the Sylvester Union via modem or via the Internet twenty- League (Green County) formed to support four hours a day. The dial-in access is at the government in suppressing the Rebel­ 608-262-8670. Internet access uses Tel­ lion, including a resolution to record the net; researchers can enter directly us­ names of traitors as "Copperheads" who gave ing the Telnet address silo.adp.wisc.edu: aid and comfort to the enemy. Also included 5034 or can enter through the Ar­ is the Sutherland family record. (This col­ chives' home page on the World Wide lection is located at the Platteville ARC.) Web at http://immv.shsiv.ioisc.edu/archives/ Papers ol Daniel Cohen, a former student radical who was active with the Weather Un­ For further information about any of the derground, including journals kept, in Archives' holdings, contact our reference staff by regular mail, by e-mail (at archives.refer- part, while he was living underground from [email protected]), by telephone (608- 1970 to 1976 which also document his life 264-6460), or by fax (608-264-6472). as a young gay man living on the W^est Coast. The 1988-1989 volume details his New Accessions partner's illness and death from AIDS. Records oi'the fourneymen Tailors' Union of Transcripts of oral history interviews con­ America, Local 215 (Madison), also known as ducted hy Dan Ginger, 1995-1996, with Anne the Madison Tailors Union, including a his­ Braden, Lawrence Higgins, and Andrew tory of the local compiled by Edna Tschida, Wade concerning a 1954 Kentucky case in one of the few women tailors and recording which Carl and Anne Braden, who had sold secretary ofthe local, from 1938 until her re­ their house to W'ade, a black man, were ac­ tirement in 1971. There are also proceedings, cused of being behind the bombing of the membership dues books, constitutions, clip­ house as part of a communist plot to stir up pings, photographs, and other miscellany. race hatred. Higgins was an assistant to Ken­ A carnival poster advertising a fund- tucky's prosecuting attorney at the time. raising carnival in Ashland, 1912. (Now at Brief papers, 1968-1995, of foseph Fahey, the Northern Great Lakes Center ARC.) peace activist, teacher, and founder of Pax Records, 1901-1992, ofthe Superior Area Christi (the International Catholic Move­ Retired Educators' Association, documenting ment for Peace), including correspondence, this society established to promote and pro­ a journal detailing a 1986 trip to the Philip­ tect the interests, rights, and welfare of re­ pines, clippings, wTitings, speeches, lectures, tired teachers. (This collection is at the Su­ and near-print materials from Pax Christi. perior ARC].) A journal kept by Olive L. Tanner of Mil­ A diary kept by William Smith of Madison waukee during 1857-1858 which reveals her while he served in Co. G of the 127''' In­ character, education, and her interest in na­ fantry, 32'"' Division in France summarizing ture and self-improvement There are also troop movements and actions, illnesses, photographs and a couple of family letters. and casualties, 1917-1918. Letters WTitten by Harry N. Nelson while Letters written by Otis Guernsey to his wife serving with Company A of the 307''' Field while he was serving with Co. D, 7''' Wiscon­ Signal Battalion, AFF during World War I sin Infantry Regiment during the Civil War

320 EROM THE STATE ARCHIVES

Members of the fourneymen Tailors' Union of America, Local 215 working at 'Fhe Hub in Madison. Pictured are (left to right) Amy Narf, Lucille Fenlriss, and Emilie Ludvig.

discussing family matters and containing his and a prominent member of Madison's black opinions on Copperheads and other subjects. community. Letters by Charles Raymond to his sister and Letters written by Melville C Brickwood to other family members describing army life his future wife, Sadie, in Milwaukee, while and actions while serving during the Civil he was with the Northwest Mounted Police War in Co. E of the 3"' Wisconsin Infantry in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, in 1904, Regiment, mainly in Virginia. Also included and while prospecting for gold in Yukon are several letters -written by his father, E. Ray­ Territory, 1906-1907. He describes the mond, and letters notifying him of Charles' hardships and conditions he encountered death at the Battle of Chancellorsville. in reaching his claim and surviving under A letter written by Thaddeus Rice to his difficult conditions. sister while stationed at Sulphur Springs, Brief records of the Pedestrian Rights Missouri, with Co. A, 11''' Wisconsin Infan­ Coalition Committee (Madison), documenting try Regiment during the Civil War, men­ the activities of concerned citizens to bring tioning the weather, friends and relatives, issues of pedestrian rights and safety to the and the lack of action. attention of Madison's Traffic Engineering Letters written by Rudolph Fine to his wife Division, the Police Department, and the in Hillsboro from Camp Randall in Madi­ public, 1976-1991. son and from Washington, D.C, while with A collection of moving-picture stills, Co. I, 6* Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, de­ pressbooks, lobby cards, posters, and other scribing living conditions, officers, and publicity items collected by Wendell Hall re­ military actions. Of note are the colorful lating mainly to animated films and films of letterheads used for many of the letters, de­ the horror, science fiction, and fantasy gen­ picting Washington, the Capitol, the U.S. res that feature special effects. Treasury, military maps and fortifications, Records, 1969-1985, oi FISH of Greater and other patriotic iconography. Green Bay Area documenting the social wel­ Program, containing an obituary, for the fare work of an ecumenical volunteer orga­ 1971 funeral oi Edna Rose Dawson, wife ofthe nization established in 1969. (This collec­ pastor at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Madison tion is at the Green Bay ARC.)

321 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999

Abstract Business records of an early St Croix Val­ ley land speculation office which evolved into a general real estate agency; and personal pa­ pers of agency owner Harry D. Baker. Lo­ cated in St. Croix Falls, the agency was estab­ lished in 1854 to manage the land and water power investments of Caleb Gushing, a Mas­ sachusetts lawyer. Originally known as the Gushing Land Agency, it was badly managed until 1874 when Gushing appointed Joseph Stannard Baker as agent. Baker administered and sold off the "Gushing Lands" while con­ comitantly acquiring land for himself. Ini­ tially selling timber cutover land for agricul­ tural purposes, the agency later focused on sale of developed farms and vacation lake homes. Baker's son, Harry D., joined the firm in 1893 and managed the company until his PnSuiniini \l,s \c. 3M/48/B/,S retirement in 196(3. The collection includes Second grade teacher Mrs. Crumpton, thefirst detailed financial records, letterbooks and a teacher in Superior to draw a pension under thefirst few client case files, records relating to land pension law enacted in 1918, shown here breaking acquisition and sale, occasional administra­ ground for a neiv school addition. tive and advertising papers, and some maps. Also contained are the personal papers of A diary kept by Harry T. Oyen of Lodi Harry D. Baker, which primarily document while Stationed in France during World War his ci-vic involvement in St. Croix Falls and re­ I containing comments on air raids and gional communities. war destruction, his movements, and his assignments doing machine repair and cleri­ History cal duties. There are also detailed notes about The Baker Land and Title Company the contents of his rucksack, a day's routines, played an important role in the growth and and instructions for some of his tasks. development ofthe St. Croix River region. In­ Letters, 1943-1945, written hy fohn f. deed, when informed of the pending dona­ Schroeder documenting his military service tion of these papei^s, the late Wisconsin his­ from basic training to action in France and torian Alice E. Smith stated that she had been Germany and time spent in the hospital in "waiting to see the Baker Land and Title England. The letters discuss family matters, Company records for years, as they tell the living conditions, duty assignments, and ac­ story ofthe settiement ofthe St. Croix Valley." tivities while on pass. The history of the company begins with Caleb Gushing and his investments in the St. Croix River Valley. (See also the Caleb Newly Processed Collections Gushing Papers, SHSW Archives Micro 45 Baker Land and Title Company. Records, and SC 276.) Gushing, who was wealthy and 1879-1958. 7.6 cf. (7 archives boxes, 2 flat influential, and several powerful Bosto- boxes, and 28 volumes), 2 cassette tapes, nians formed the St. Croix and Lake Supe­ and 33 reels of microfilm (35mm). This col­ rior Mineral Company in 1845 with the in­ lection is located at the River Falls Area Re­ tention of mining copper ore along the St. search Center. Croix River. Although nothing came of the

322 EROM EKE STATE ARCHIVES mining venture. Gushing did travel to the This hotel burned to the ground in 1880. Dur­ region in 1846 and purchased the St. Croix ing the blaze, J. S. ran into the burning build­ Lumber Company based in St. Croix Falls. ing with a long rope and pulled the heavy safe, Several other regional investments fol­ which held the company's records, to safety. lowed. Many of these proved to be unsuc­ A separate building for the agency, located on cessful since Gushing operated as an "ab­ the main street of St. Croix Falls, was com­ sentee landlord," leaving others to care for pleted in 1881. This building was still occu­ his interests. This had much to do with the pied by the company as late as 1997. mismanagement of the companies that Although Gushing himself died in 1879, Gushing formed and disbanded during the Baker continued to manage Cushing's as­ period f'rom 1846 to 1874. One such com­ sets in Polk County, finally selling off the pany, which became known as the Gushing water power properties in 1887 and the last Land Agency, was established in 1854 with of the Gushing Lands sometime later. agents hired to represent Cushing's water After the sale of Cushing's interests. Baker power and land interests. continued operating the land business on his By 1869, Cushing's regional assets included own accord. As early as 1876, he had been ac­ those of the original lumber company, most quiring land chiefly through tax certificate ofthe land comprising the village of St. Croix purchases. At that time, Wisconsin counties Falls, the entire water power properties asso­ issued a certificate (in effect, a lien) on lands ciated with the falls ofthe St. Croix River, and with unpaid taxes and subsequently sold about 33,000 acres of unimproved timber these certificates to land firms and private in­ lands in the northern part of Pt^lk County. dividuals. A different certificate number The land, acquired in 1869 from the State of would be issued for each year that taxes were Wisconsin under provisions ofthe Morrill Act not paid on a particular piece of property. (in which thousands of acres of lands granted Baker used this process to acquire money to the state for support of an agricultural col­ from the interest he charged owners to re­ lege were sold), formed the basis of subse­ deem (pay) their certificates and to acquire quent land sales. These sales were primarily to title to lands in which the owner did not re­ Scandinavians, many of whom came directiy deem their certificates within the required from Europe. Among them was a Swedish three year-period. In this way, J. S. obtained group that came in 1869 and a large Danish full title to thousands of acres of timber and colony that arrived some time later farm land in three Wisconsin counties. He Although purchase ofthe agricultural col­ generally sold these lands through land con­ lege lands, later called the Gushing Lands, tracts with small down payments and annual proved to be a good investment, early man­ payments as little as $25 to $50 with a six per agement of these lands was injudicious at cent interest rate. Payment in full resulted in best. However in 1874, Gushing appt^inted delivery of the warranty deed. Major Joseph Stannard (J. S.) Baker, a Ci-vil Eldest son Ray Stannard Baker, newspaper War regimental commander, to manage the reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner, worked stagnating Gushing empire. Baker relocated in his father's office for a time after his grad­ his family from Lansing, Michigan, and set­ uation from college. Reminiscences of the tled into the community, living in a large land agency are included in his book. Native house known as the Agent's Residence. American (1941). The company prospered and by 1875 As his father's deafness (the result of a Gushing had increased his land holdings in Civil War injury) became complete, son the county to about 45,000 acres. Company of­ Harry D. joined the firm in 1893. He rec­ fices were located on the ground floor of the ommended advertising as a means to pay Gushing House, a three-story frame hotel sit­ the considerable debts that the agency uated on Washington Street in St. Croix Falls. owed. Advertising was instituted and by

323 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OE HISTORY SUMMER, 1999

ACiilfc f^riTinf ^^ "'^^^ hundretis, of land deals annually Real Estate RCsUlla v>uuai toalling in the niillioos uf dollars, nearly half heisig to local people. Where others ger jiatlsfacfory service, vosi c&is 100. Mortgage Loans Asii for Bulleiin and Farm tist. 99 Percent Accurate Abstracts S7i,??S?| perfect. Oyr abssracfs are in demsnd by ihose who Knra- whaf a good Abstracts Que should be. Neat, reliable, t^'pev-ritteo, doubly compsred, st av Jo^ cost as Of hers. Insurance 1% Saved on Many Loans SL'^hi'rtJrl'S RAV STANN-ABO BAKBK. Pitt. O. SS. CCMEl!, Vm-P»«. • partial psymeat plas; worth that alont Gef our r,ites- Ko delay HARiiV D. BAKKR, SecTwM. fn»51irP Yniir Hnn«5P Your cattle, ycur crops, your car a K V«iIXGX, LCBH-^-IKS. lllauiC i UUI i lUlisCj and don i Forget to insure tnsi which is of oioit va^ue- -your A'XR hk. Ve reprcsenr Guardian Life— n. K. PL.ATMA.V. l.H«i. a Whconsln companv th.tt invtsB i(^ monsv iR U^i-jcoiisirf mortgages. r C. AVEIXHARDT, AlKi!t«rt« •-X'e urite at' Kind-, of msm-gnce C O. THOMAS, Uts ln.i. Baker Land and Title Company ST. CKOIX FALLS, WISCONSIN

An advertisement for the Baker Land and 'I'itle Comf)any, 1919.

1898 all debts had been paid. Also during St. Paul as sites for summer homes and va­ that time, J. S. became interested in refor­ cation cottages. The lake frontage business estation ofthe cutover lands under his own­ was an important adjunct to the general ership. He paid special attention to land be farm business. Still in existence (1997), the owned on Deer Lake, planting a total of company continues its work in commercial 30,000 trees over a period of eight to ten and lake front properties, although the pri­ years. When queried about it, J. S. replied, mary focus is now residential dwellings. "Some people in this world want big white J. S., regarded as a prominent citizen of monuments; I will take a green one." St. Croix Falls, died in 1912. Although he In 1902, the firm was incorporated as was one of the founders of the First Presby­ the Gushing Land Agency, under the joint terian Church in St. Croix Falls, he was not management of J. S. and Harry Baker. In able to participate fully in many civic con­ 1911 the articles of incorporation of the cerns due to his deafness. His son Harry was firm were amended and the name was involved in a number of civic interests in­ changed to the Baker Land and Title Com­ cluding the First Presbyterian Church, Red pany. It was intended to be a general real Cross and county assistance following a 1922 estate business primarily serving Polk, tornado, and the Polk County Council of Washburn, Burnett, and Douglas counties. Defense during World War I. Harry man­ Land contracts went out of common use aged the company for seventy-two years, re­ by the agency after its focus shifted to that tiring in 1966 at age ninety-two. (See also of a general real estate brokerage firm. By Joseph Stannard Baker Papers, River Falls this time, most farms had already been de­ Mss EG, River Falls Micro 8, and Micro 432.) veloped as agricultural land by previous owners and when the Baker firm sold them Scope and Content it offered the buyers mortgages, not land The Baker Land and Title Company contracts. As automobile ownership and records are organized into the following se­ usage grew more common, the business ries: Administrative Subject File, Correspon­ moved into lake frontage land investments. dence, Financial Records, Land Records, and Lake lands were subdivided, platted, and Personal Papers of Harry D. Baker. These sold to people in nearby Minneapolis and records as a whole proxdde a detailed picture

324 EROM THE STATE ARCHIVES of an early St. Croix Valley land speculation several different bookkeeping approaches office and its evolution into a general real es­ over the years and the collection has miss­ tate agency. Although J. S. Baker came to St. ing segments. It is likely that an earlier ac­ Croix Falls as Cushing's land agent in 1874, counting system was in place between 1874 the records begin in 1879 with the bulk of to 1888. No records survive from that pe­ materials occurring within the period 1886 to riod. A system which may have been in use 1924. Earlier information regarding Baker's from 1888 was superseded in 1917. The fi­ work with the Gushing Lands and his own nancial records have been organized by land acquisition efforts are absent. Although subseries. Due to missing components and some original volumes were retained, all let­ changes in bookkeeping systems, the sub- terbooks and some financial and land record series are not organized from general to volumes are available only on microfilm. specific, but rather chronologically with the The Administrative Subject File (1888- earliest coverage occurring first. 1921) is the least complete and includes a few The bank books (1887-1919) are essen­ documents of historical import such as forms tially bank registers that detail deposits and and stationery, company and land advertise­ withdrawals from the many banks with which ments, and an architect's specifications book­ the company had accounts. Although sum­ let for alterations to the agency's St. Croix mary financial information is carried from Falls building. Additional company adver­ this subseries into other financial records, spe­ tisements include a souvenir booklet of Polk cific notes about check recipients and pur­ County printed by the firm and a broadside. poses are not. Each book is divided into indi­ An undated address book (with business- vidual bank accounts and the date span of related notations), engraved portraits of Caleb each bank account varies, but each flows from Gushing, Polk and Burnett county maps de­ one book to the next. There is a separate book tailing agency land holdings, and records re­ for tiie Polk County Bank from 1917 to 1919. lating to tree plantings of J. S. Baker's Deer The daybooks (1888-1917) provide a Lake property complete the series. chronological listing of all receipts and ex­ Correspondence (1886-1916) provides penditures as they occur. As with the other insights into the daily operations ofthe firm. financial records, the daybooks are quite Letterbooks (1886-1909) consist of outgo­ specific, including individual names, legal ing mail sent to sellers, businesses, banks, land descriptions, and purpose of expendi­ and prospective clients. Indexes, organized ture or receipt. alphabetically by last name of correspon­ General ledgers (1888-1918) serve as the dent, appear at the front of each letterbook. record of final entry for the company. Trans­ There were few extant client case files and actions are classified under the company ac­ most were heavily mildewed and unreadable. counts to which they apply and then appear Those which remain contain both incoming chronologically within the account. The ma­ and outgoing correspondence and provide jority of account categories consists of names a fuller picture of the firm and its dealings. of individuals and firms that bought or sold Correspondence in both the letterbooks and land through the agency, although account case files consists of descriptions of available categories for general company expenses are land, advertising and sales approaches, land also included. Information is specific, con­ financing details, client contacts, and busi­ sisting of legal land description and transac­ ness negotiations. Case files also document tion purpose. Ledgers from 1888 to 1907 also agency ties with other land firms. contain personal account categories for J. S. Financial Records (1887-1924) have Baker and his household. Each volume in­ been retained in their entirety due to both cludes an alphabetical index to accounts. the extensive financial detail provided and In 1917, a new bookkeeping system was es­ the rarity of such records. The agency used tablished that included general journals and

,325 Harry D. Baker (seated, left) at a Baker family picnic at Deer Lake, 1896. cashbooks. From 1917 to 1919, the company side, and, when the book is turned upside maintained a general journal that organized down and over, bills receivable is on the other financial transactions chronologically and in­ The Land Records (1879-1921) are not cluded detailed journal entries with dollar complete, but still provide an in-depth view amounts identified under specific categories of agency land speculation, property acqui­ and banks. Cashbooks from 1917 to 1919 sitions, income property, and land sales for served a similar function, acting as a special the periods covered by the surviving records. record of original entry for transactions that The tax certificate ledgers (on certificates involved either cash received or cash dis­ purchased, 1880-1899) contain descriptions bursed. In May, 1919, the general journals of lands that the agency attempted to acquire and cashbooks were combined and a com­ through payment of unpaid taxes. The vol­ plete set exists up to 1924. There is also a sep­ umes are roughly organized by account cate­ arate set of journals from 1920 to 1923. gory or second party for which the firm was These journal entries are not duplicated in serving as agent, date of county certificate bulk the cashbook and journal volumes. sale, and tax certificate number. Entries in­ Other financial records include general clude legal land description, tax years and re­ trial balance books (1893-1921) that provide lated tax certificate numbers, date the certifi­ monthly financial summaries of the balances cates were redeemed (paid) by the land owner in established account categories. A volume or date the agency acquired deed (ownership) entitied "Bills Receivable/Bills Payable" (re­ to the property, and remarks. A map index in­ ceivable, 1888-1909; payable, 1890-1908) dicating physical location ofthe properties for contains twc^ separate chronological listings which the agency had purchased tax certifi­ for monies owed the agency and monies that cates is available for the first volume. the agency owed. This volume may relate Real estate ledgers (1880-C.1901) con­ only to loans. Interest rates are often in­ tain information concerning those proper­ cluded. The book has exhibit value as an "up­ ties to which the agency either acquired full side down" book—the bills payable is on one title for itself or for a second party through

326 FROM 'EHE S'EATE ARCHIVES

the tax certificate sale process. Entries in­ garding land buyers who did not complete clude legal land description, page number payments on land purchased through the reference to the relevant entry in the Tax agency. Annotations in red ink refer to cor­ Certificate Ledgers, type of title held, date respondence in the agency's letterbooks of title, county public record where title was and daybooks. The Soo Land and Im­ recorded, year and amount of taxes paid, provement Company (possibly the Sault total cost, type of selling instrument, date Ste. Marie Land and Improvement Com­ of sale, amount received on the principal pany) , which appears to have been involved and interest, and remarks. A map index in this defaulted property, is repeatedly covering both ledgers and indicating phys­ mentioned. An alphabetical index by pur­ ical location of the real estate is available. chaser's name is at the front ofthe volume. Tax list registers (1887-1903) and tax re­ Other land records include a few pages ceipts (1906-1911) identify lands on which from what appears to have been a land sales the agency paid taxes. The registers also log book (1884-1889) and some abstracts contain notations regarding disposition of of tide (1879-1904) detaihng the history of the land including who bought it, amount, property ownership on some lands that the and date of sale. agency owned. Record of conveyances (1890-1909) doc­ Personal Papers of Harry D. Baker uments legal actions taken involving lands ei­ (1880-1953) document Baker's involve­ ther owned by the agency or by a second ment with the community and region. They party for whom the agency acted as agent. include materials relating to the construc­ The volume is organized numerically by as­ tion and administration of the First Presby­ signed instrument number that most likely terian Church in St. Croix Falls, his service related to files containing full documenta­ on the Polk County Gouncil of Defense tion on the action. Information includes the during World War I, and his work with the seller's and buyer's names, the type of land Red Cross and county in offering disaster deed or contract written, dates, monies spec­ relief to farmers following a tornado that ified, legal land description, and comments. went through the area in 1922. A letter- In addition to land sales, the volume also in­ book (1901-1911) contains correspon­ cludes actions taken related to use of the dence relating to Baker's civic involvements land as income property such as timber sales. including his work in the establishment of Land contract ledgers (1880-1921) are Wisconsin's first state park, Interstate Park a record of who purchased either agency or along the Dalles of the St. Croix River. second party land by land contract. They An assortment of other materials includes include type of land contract, buyer's and photocopies of transcribed letters (1952- seller's names, legal land description, con­ 1953) written by Baker to his long-deceased tract date, payment price, rate of payment, brother, (]larence, which consist of Baker's notes, actual payment amounts, and pay­ reminiscences of his childhood and family, ment dates. Indexes to land purchasers are area history, the land agency, Presbyterian in the front of both volumes. church, and thoughts of his brother Also in­ The loans and mortgage book (c. 1886- cluded is a transcribed interview conducted 1903) and the mortgage register (1895- with Baker in 1950 by W. H. Glover in which 1905) are a payment record of lands which he discusses the land agency. Interstate Park, were purchased from the agency or a sec­ his father, and interesting area personalities. ond party through mortgage loans. The One such personality was a Swedish immi­ volumes include purchaser indexes and are grant, Olaf Strandberg, and the collection in­ organized numerically by loan number cludes a selection of his stories, in Swedish- The default property journal (1887- English dialect, as remembered and written 1888) contains financial information re­ down by Baker.

327 Wisconsin History Checklist Gregerson, Merle W. 1778 to 1998 "Nattes- tad" Norway Settlements Established in Recently published and currently available Wis­ Faeroe Islands and Rock County, Wisconsin consiana added to the Society's Library are in 1878 and 1838. (Onalaska?, Wiscon­ listed below. The compilers, Susan Dorst, as­ sistant acquisitions librarian, and Charlotte sin, 1998. 1 vol. Illus. $5.00. Available Mullen, order technician, are interested in ob­ from author, Hwy 35 N5995, Onalaska, taining informauon about (or copies of) items Wisconsin 54650.) that are not widely advertised, such as publica­ tions of local historical societies, family histories Fhe Heritage of Hartford: Commemorating the and genealogies, privately printed works, and Centennial Celebration of Hartford, Wiscon­ histories of churches, institutions, or organiza­ sin, 1883-1983. (Hartford, Wisconsin, tions. Authors and publishers wishing to reach 1998? Pp. 92, A-10. Illus. $15.00. Avail­ a wider audience and also to perform a valuable bibliographic service are urged to inform the able from Hartford Public Library, 115 compilers of their publications, including the North Main Street, Hartford, Wisconsin following information: author, title, location 53027.) and name ofthe publisher date of publication, price, pagination, and address of supplier Write Hodgson, Milo. Davis Brothers of Barneveld: Susan Dorst, Acquisitions Section. Their Business History in Arena & Barn­ eveld, Iowa County, Wisconsin. (Mount Common Threads: a History of Four Wisconsin Horeb, Wisconsin, 1998? 1 vol. Illus. No Communities in Green Lake County; Mar­ price listed. Available from author, 207 quette, Kingston, Manchester, Dalton. (Eangs- South 8''^ Street, Mount Horeb, Wiscon­ ton?, Wisconsin, 1998. Pp. 340, [13]. hlus. sin 53572.) $50.00 plus $3.00 postage and handling. Janke, Lester. Index to Stories of Pioneer Days Available from Mill Pond Public Library, in the Black River Valley. (Black River Falls, 151 North South Street, RO. Box 98, Kingston, Wisconsin 53939-0098.) Wisconsin, cl996. Pp. 9. $3.00. Available from Sue E. Eddy, WI 1770 County Rd R Dahlinger, Fred, Jr. and Thayer, Stuart. Black River Falls, Wisconsin 54615- Badger Slate Showmen: a History of Wis­ 5926.) consin's Circus Heritage. (Madison, Wis­ Janke, Cheryl. Index to Biographical History consin, Grote Publishing, cl998. Pp. vii, of Clark and fackson Counties, Wisconsin. 142. Illus. $29.95 pills'^ $4.00 postage (Black River Falls, Wisconsin, cl996. Pp. and handling. Available from Circus 44. $7.00. Available from Sue E. Eddy, World Museum, Baraboo, W^isconsin W11770 County Rd R Black River Falls, 53913.) Wisconsin 54615-5926.) Eddy, Sue E. fackson County, WI, Index to Lukes, Roy. Toft Point: a Legacy of People and Marriages, 1907-1946. (Black River Falls, Pines. (Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, 1998. Pp. Wisconsin, cl996. Pp. 99. $5.00. Avail­ iv, 260. $17.95 plus $6.05 postage and able from author, W11770 County Rd P, handling. Available from Nature-Wise, Black River Falls, Wisconsin 54615- P.O. Box 105, Egg Harbor, Wisconsin 5926.) 54209.) Eddy, Sue E. (Peterson). Reminiscences. McKee, Sandra (Schulze). The Story of Chris­ (Black River Falls, Wisconsin, 1995. Pp. tian Friedrich Schmidt and Mary Regina 105, 3. $25.00. Available from author, (Brietzig) Schmidt and Their Descendants in W11770 County Rd P, Black River Falls, America. (Waukesha, Wisconsin, 1997. 89 Wisconsin 54615-5926.) Cover title is leaves. Illus. $20.00. Available from au­ Reminiscences: Early History of fackson thor, 1811 WohRoad, Waukesha, Wis­ County, Wisconsin. consin 53186.)

328 WTSCONSIN HISTORY CHECKTIST

Memories of Waukesha County, in Celebration 1892-1902. (Oshko,sh, Wisconsin, cl998. of Wisconsin's Sesquicentennial. (Wauke­ Pp. 178. $15.00 plus $3.00 postage and sha, Wisconsin, 1998. Pp. 35. No price handling. Available from Winnebago­ listed. Available from Waukesha County land Genealogical Society, c/o Oshkosh Department of Aging, Suite 130, 1320 Public Library, 106 Washington Avenue, Pewaukee Road, Waukesha, Wisconsin Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54901.) 53188.) Spector, Robert. Shared Values: a History of Porter, Charles W. In the Devil's Dominions: a Kimberly-Clark. (Lyme, Connecticut, Union Soldier's Adventures in "Bushwhacker Greenwich Publishing Group, Inc., Country". (Nevada, Missouri, cl998. Pp. cl997. Pp. 239. Illus. No price hsted. xiv, 215. $14.95 plus $2.50 postage and Available from Kimberly-Clark Corpora- handling. Available from Vernon County don, RO. Box 999, 2100 Winchester Historical Society, 231 North Main, Road, Neenah, Wisconsin 54957-0999.) Nevada, Missouri 64772.) Porter was a member of the 3'^'^ Wisconsin Cavalry sta­ Winding Through the Tozvn of Wayne. tioned in southwest Missouri from 1862 (Wayne?, Wisconsin, 1998. Pp. 334. Illus. to 1865. $20.00. Available from the Town of Wayne, Darlene Schaub, 9575 Town Protz, Ruth L. Index to Marriage Records, Line Road, Kewauskum, Wisconsin Winnebago County, Wisconsin, Volume 3, 53040.)

John C. Geilfuss Fellowship

The winner ofthe 1999 Geilfuss Fellowship Society and retired chairman of the board is Terence Kehoe, who will use the award of Marine Corporation and Marine Na­ to support his research in the Society's col­ tional Exchange Bank. The choice of the lections on his study of the North Ameri­ Geilfuss fellow is made by a committee se­ can pulp and paper industry and its inter­ lected by the Society, which reserves the action with the environment. Kehoe, a right not to award the fellowship in any visiting assistant professor at Wake Forest given year. Applicants should submit four University, is the author of Cleaning Up the copies of a current resume and four copies Great Lakes: From Cooperation to Confronta­ of a letter of not more than two pages, de­ tion, (1997). scribing their background and training in The John Cl (ieilfuss Fellowship carries historical research and a description of an outright grant of $2,000. The fellowship their current research work. This descrip­ is awarded for research at the graduate tion should include the proposal, types of level and beyond in Wisconsin and U.S. sources to be used, possible conclusions, business and economic history, with pref­ and the applicant's conception of the erence given to topics on Wisconsin and work's significance. Applications must be the American Midwest and/or for research received by February 1 of each year and using the collections ofthe State Historical should be addressed to: Dr. Michael E. Society of Wisconsin. The fellowship is Stevens, State Historian, State Historical So­ named for the late John C. Geilfuss, past ciety ofWlsconsin, 816 State Street, Madi­ president of the Board of Curators of the son,'Wiscon.sin, 53706-1482.

329 Contributors

HELEN M. CC:>RNELI spent most of the first eighteen years of her life in India. Her colleges were Washington University, St. Louis; the University of Illinois; and the University ofWlsconsin. When her husband's decision to go into farming took the family to Plain- field, she taught English at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, and administered its overseas program. Keenly aware of population pressures and the environment, her recent retirement years in New Mexico have allowed her to write a book, in progress, m^ J about her Plainfield friends and neighbors, the Hamerstroms, and their lives of public service. "My real education was in that rural area where I learned that concern for people and for the environment must—and can—go hand in hand."

KERRY TR/VSK is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin- Manitowoc. He graduated from Hamline University in 1965, re­ ceived his Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota in 1971, and has lived and taught in Wisconsin since then. A native of Canada, Trask is particularly interested in the early history of the Great Lakes region. He is the author of two books, the most recent being fire Within: A Civil War Narrative from Wisconsin. Fire Within was awarded the Council for Wisconsin Writers' Leslie Cross Book-Length Nonfiction Award, the State Historical of Wis­ consin's Distinguished Service to History Book Award of Merit, and the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Award for Out­ standing Achievement by a Wisconsin Author, all for 1996.

ROBERT J. Goucin is a native of New Jersey and experienced its ter­ centenary in 1965. He was an undergraduate at Rutgers during the university's bicentennial commemoration in 1966. In 1976, as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, he lived in Philadelphia at the time ofthe national bicentennial celebra­ tion. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1981 and was a member of the Eau Claire Community Al­ liance committee, which coordinated local events during Wis­ consin's sesquicentennial. Most recently, he is the author of Farm­ ing the Cutover: A Social History of Northern Wisconsin, 1900-1940, which in 1998 received a Book Award of Merit from the State His­ torical Society ofWlsconsin.

330 Corporate Sponsors

ADMANCO, INC. J&H MARSH AND MCLENNAN Ripon Milwaukee

AID ASSOCIATION FOR LU IHERANS MARSHALL AND ILSI.KY FOUNDATION, INC. Appleton Milwaukee

ALI.IANT WISCONSIN POWKR AND LK;HT FOUNDATION MARSHALL ERDMAN AND ASSOCIATES Madison Madison

BANTA ("ORPORATION FOUNDATION, lNt\ NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL 1,IFE INSURANCE COMPANY Menasha Milwaukee

BREWER METAL CRAFTSMEN PLEASANT COMPANY Beaver Dam Middleton

CHFM-AL, INC. RACINE FEDERATED, INC. Racine Racine

C^ONSOLIDATED PAPERS FOUNDATION, INC. RIPON FOODS, INC. Wisconsin Rapids Ripon

CUNA MUTUAL CJROUP FOUND.ATION, INC. RURAL INSURANCE COMPANIES Madison Madison

CUSTOM TOOL SERVICE ST. FRANCIS BANK Ciermantown Brookfield

GERE CORPORATION C.G. SCHMIDT, INC. Janesville Milwaukee

GILLETTE STAFIONERY PRODUCTS CIROUP SHEBOYGAN PAINT CIOMPANY Janesville Sheboygan

HARLEY'-DAVIDSON, INC. SVEDALA INDUSTRIES Milwaukee Appleton

HuFCOR, INC. UNITED WISCONSIN SERVICES FOUNDATION, INC. Janesville Milwaukee

JONES DAIRY FARM WEBCRAFTERS-FRAUTSCHI FOUNDAITON, INC. Fort Atkinson Madison

KOHLER C^OMPANY THE WEST BEND COMPANY Kohler West Bend

L.^NDs' END, INC. WFIYTE HIRSCHBOECK DUDEK S.C. Dodgeville Milwaukee

M&I BANK OF SOUTHERN WISCONSIN WINDWAY FOUNDATION, INC. Madison Sheboygan

MADISON GAS AND ELECTRIC CIOMPANY WlSC-TV ,S-MuRPHY ENTERTAINME.NT GROUP Madison Madison

THE MANITOWOC C^OMPANY WISCONSIN PHYSICIANS SERVICE Manitowoc Madison

THE MARCUS CORPORATION FOUNDATION, INC. WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL/THE CAPITAL TIMES Milwaukee Madison 331 Patrons

LOUISE S. COLEM.^N IRWIN AND ROBERT GOODMAN RUTH DEYOUNC; KOHLER Columbus Madison Kohler E. DAVID AND JEAN C'RONON WARREN E. AND DELTA HANSEN MARY M. SWAN Madison Mukwonago Beaver Dam GERALDINE X. DRISCOLL THOMAS M. JEFFRIS 11 Winneconne Janesville

Fellows

STEPHEN E. AMBROSE LESLIE H. FISHEL, JR. ALAN T. NOLAN Bay St. Louis, Mississippi Madi.son Indianapolis, Indiana RICHARD N. C'URRENT JOAN E. FRF;EMAN WILLIAM F. THOMPSON, JR. South Natick, .Massachusells .Madison Madison

Curators Emeritus

E. DAVID CRONON NATHAN S. HEFFERNAN ROBERT B. L. MURPHY Madison Madison Middleton SCOTT M. CUTLIP WILLIAM HUFFMAN FREDERICK I. OLSON Madison Milwaukee Wauwatosa JANET S. HARTZELL HOWARD W. MEAD ROBERT S. ZIGMAN Grantsburg Madison .Mequon

Life Members

EDWARD P. ALEXANDER TERRY L. HALLER GRETA MURPHY J. R. AMACKER TOM AND NANCY HANSON JOHN T. MURPHY HELEN C. ANDRUSKEVICZ WILLIA.M K HARDINC; ROBERT B. L. AND AICABEE MIJRPHY DENNIS ANTONIE JOSEPH F HEIL EUGENEJ. AND OLIVE .NORDBY MARION K APPEEC;ATE MARY" F. HITSELBER(;ER JANIS W. NOTZ IRA L. AND INEVA R. B.AI.DWIN GERALD E. HOLZMAN P.ATRiciA OGILVIE JANE K. BILLINGS MRS. PETER D. HUMLEKER, JR. LORETTA B. PECK ROBERT E. BILLINGS JOHN M. AND VIRGINIA IRVIN A.J. PEEKE R.JEROME AND P.ATRICTA .\. BOC;F VIRGIL GEORGE JACKSON LLOYD H. ANDJANE PETTIT OSCAR C. AND PATRKTA BOLDT C^AROI.YN JOHNSON JOHN J. PHILIPPSEN ARLENE BRACHMAN POLLY KACZMAREK NANCY HIGBEE POLLOCK PAUL L. BRENNER RASMUS B. A. AND DONNA KALNES PATRICIA F. SCHMITT LOUIS H. BURBF;Y JOHN P. KAMINSKI LUNANA MARY SIBERZ DONNA J. BURGEI IE DORO I HY KRAUSE PHILIP AND PHYLLIS SILLMAN GEORGE N.AU BURRIDGE HARVEY B. KREBS JOHN S. SKILTON THOMAS E. OESTECKER IRENE DANIELL KRESS JANE AN.NE SMITH THOMAS E CAESTECKER, JR. ROY C. LABUDDE MRS. CLAUS SPORCK FRANCISJ. CONWAY LARS ERIK LARSON JOHN STEINER LAURENE DF;WTTT DAVIDSON ALFRED A. LAUN III FREDJ. STRONG AUDREY R. DUCKERT JOHN I. LAUN DAWN E. STUCKI JOHN AND DELORES C. DUCKLOW EUGENE I. MAJERCJWICZ MILDRED M. TAIT JENNIFER EAGER EHLE C. L. MARQUF;TTE DUANE AND SARA VETTER LOUISE H. ELSER MARY C;. MARTIN WALTER L. VOGL DOROTHY J. FRAUTSCHI CAROLYNJ. MATNEY WALTERJ. VOLLRATH,JR. FRANK FRIEDMAN JACK MCKEITHAN FRANCIS H. WENDF MARK GAJEWSKI BESSIE H. MELAND JOHN \\'YN(;AARD JAMES S. GEIGER F. O. MINTZLAFF

332 THE BOARD OF CURATORS

THOMAS H. BARI.AND VIVIAN L. GUZNICZAK C;EORGE H. MILLER Eau C:iaire Franklin Ripon JANE B. BERNHARDI' CHARLES E. HAAS Dou(;ij\s A. OGILVIE Cassville La C Crosse Hortonville PATRICIA A. BOGE BETTE M. HAYES MARY CONNOR PIERCIE 1^ Crosse De Pere Wisconsin Rapids MARY F. BUKSTRIN FANNIE E. HICKI.IN JANICE M. RICE Mequon Madi.son Madison (li.KNN R. COATES RICHARD H. HOLSCHER FRED A. RISSER Racine Milwaukee Madi.son JOHN MII.TON COOPER.JR. GREGORY B. HUBER BRIAN D. RUDE Madison Wausau (^oon Valley WII.I.IAM ). CRONON MARJ.ARET B. HUMLEKER JOHN M. RUSSELL Madison Fond du Lac Menomonie NESS FI.ORES THOMAS MOUATJKEERIS II MARY A. SATHER Waukesha Janesville New Richmond STEPHEN ). FREESE RUTH DE YOUNC; KOHLER GERALD D. VISTE Dodgeville Kohler Wausau MARK L. GAJEWSKI PHYLLIS KRUTSCH ANNE M. WEST Madison Washburn Milwaukee PAUL C. GARTZKE VIRGINIA R. MAt:NEn. Madison Bayside

JENNIFER EAGER EHLE, President, Friends ofthe Stale DAVID W. OLIEN, Senior Vice-President, University of Historical Society of Wisconsin Wisconsin System ROCKNE Ci. FLOWERS, President, Wisconsin History JUDY CJATES, President, Wisconsin Council/or Foundation Local History

Friends ofthe State Historical Society ofWlsconsin

Officers JENNIFER EA(;ER EHLE, Evansville DONNA KALNES, Eagle President Vice-President DEE A. GRIMSRUD, Madison NANCYJ. EMMERT, Madison Secretary Treasurer

Trustees NANCY ALLEN CHARI.ES R. "CHUCK" HILSTON LAURI MORRIS West Bend Madison Madisj)n RUTH WHITE ANDERSON BARBARAJ. KAISER BARBARA A. NORDSTROM Edgerton Madison Manitowoc THEODORE E. "TV;D" CRABB CIHRISTY MAYER DIANE RIKKERS Madison Madison Madison HARVA HACHTEN RICHARD L. MCNAI.L GEORGE A. TALBOT III Madison Janesville Madison FANNIE E. HICKLIN Madison THE HIST0RIC:AL SOCIETY SHALL promote a wider appreciation of the American heritage with particular emphasis on the collection, advancement and ri84& dissemination of knowledge of the history of Wisconsin and the West. —Wisconsin Statutes, Chapter 44

Manitowoc, 1856